Scenes from an Accidental Courtship
by Sorrel
Summary: Well.  Maybe a little bit more than friends.  Season 7, SamDaniel, implied SamJack, implied JackDaniel, implied OT3.


**Scenes From An Accidental Courtship.**

**-----**

Sam found Daniel in his lab, staring helplessly at the spotless table and neatly organized shelves. "This is crazy," he said to her, without turning around. "He _organized_ things."

"And this is bad… how?" she asked. She wasn't quite in control of her own smile, which kept trying to take over at the sight of him, back here, where he belonged. Even if he was deeply unhappy at the state of his private workspace.

"I don't _do_ organization," he informed her, as if she'd lost her memory right along with his. She'd have had to, to forget something like that. He was _infamous_ for that chaotic state of both his life and his files. Somehow he always managed to muddle through with a mild look and a stubborn tilt of his chin, and she had never quite figured out how he did it. "How am I supposed to find anything?"

"Well, you can tear everything out, throw it around, then pick a few at random and toss them back into the filing cabinet. That should bring it back to normal."

He finally glanced over at her, his irritating fading into shared annoyance. "Fine, mock the amnesiac. Give me a few days and I'll remember all the really embarrassing things about you, you know."

I missed this, Sam thought. That one line kept repeating in her head, day after day, every time she saw Daniel, talked to him, argued or bantered or got drunk with him. (The latter had only happened once so far, which was a very good thing because Daniel couldn't drink beer worth a damn but he could drink stuff that would make the Colonel choke without batting an eye, and Sam really just couldn't keep up.) She'd missed this, missed him, more than she could ever say.

"I'm looking forward to it," she said, and it wasn't a joke, not at all, and Daniel looked at her sharply, measuring the intent behind her words, before cracking a smile that was like the sun coming out.

"Me, too."

**-----**

"Come on, Daniel."

Sam stopped when she heard Colonel O'Neill's voice. She'd been coming to see if Daniel wanted to grab some lunch, but apparently the Colonel had gotten there before her.

"No, Jack," Daniel said, his voice holding that overly-patient tone that always meant he really, really wanted to hit you but was too polite to actually do it. "I'm busy. There are plenty of hapless young airmen you can abuse instead of me. Go bother one of them."

"But you're right here," the Colonel said, wheedling. "You've been working out with Teal'c."

"And what, you're jealous?" Daniel's laugh was sharp and amused. "Grow up, Jack. And waste your time somewhere else. I'm actually working, unlike others I could name."

"Oh, fuck you," Jack snapped, and stormed out. He almost mowed her down on his way out, and didn't even bother to nod and acknowledge her presence as he stomped past her. Sam stared wide-eyed at his departing back, then stuck her head in the doorway to find Daniel calmly cataloguing artifacts.

"So," she said, after a short knock to announce her presence. "I take it that didn't go well?"

"Jack's bored," Daniel said. "He didn't take it well when I didn't want to oblige him in his boredom."

"Yeah, I… heard," she said. It didn't count as eavesdropping when they were shouting, right? "Is there a problem between you two?" She couldn't think of anything major enough to break past the Colonel's pleasure at having Daniel back again, and Daniel himself was much more unruffle-able when it came to Jack than he had been in the months leading up to his death.

"Oh, you know Jack. It'll blow over in an hour or two."

Daniel didn't really seem concerned, so she decided to drop it. Not like talking about the Colonel was her favorite thing ever, anyway. There were some things that were better kept in her own head, and Daniel had always been scary-good at getting her to spill all her deep, dark secrets.

"So," she said, remembering why she'd come in here. "I suppose you're too busy for lunch?"

He looked up from the table of stuff and grinned at her. "I think I can spare a few minutes."

"Good," she said, and led the way out.

**-----**

"Well," Daniel said, collapsing onto the stool on the other side of her lab table, "that was extremely weird."

"Even by our standards," she said with a grimace. "We've had more than our fair share of doubles, but robots and alternate universes are one thing. Asgard clones are something else altogether."

"You're telling me," he muttered. "Christ. He was just a _kid._"

"And yet," she said.

"And yet," he agreed. "He was definitely Jack. I wonder if he was always like that?"

"I hope not," she said. "It was weird enough hearing the Colonel talking out of the mouth of a fifteen-year-old kid. The thought that he might have been like that when he was actually a kid is…"

"Terrifying is the word you're looking for," Daniel pointed out wryly. "He's got such a strong personality."

She nodded, and silence fell between them. She typed a few lines of equations; he fiddled with one of her pens, stealing glances at her when he thought she wasn't looking. There was obviously something on his mind, and it was equally obvious that he was having trouble talking about it.

She just waited patiently, working like she was alone and pretending not to watch him fidgeting across the table. The monitor hid her face quite nicely, but if she leaned just the right way, she could easily see the grimaces he was making as he talked himself into talking to her.

Finally, he seemed to work up the nerve to just spit it out. "I went to see Jack yesterday."

She finally looked up, her brow wrinkling with confusion. "But he's right here," she pointed out. "He's been on base sunup to sundown since he got... cloned. Oh."

"Yeah," he said, looking back down at the lab table. "Jack would kill me if he knew. He seems to want to cut all ties."

"You can't really blame him, can you?" she asked. "I mean, he's never really done well with having copies of him around, and seeing himself as a teenager has got to be bizarre in the extreme."

"I know, I know," Daniel said. "But it didn't feel right, just kicking him to the curb like that. It's not like it's his fault he is the way he is."

"That covers so many things about the Colonel," Sam said dryly, but she did know what he meant. She and Daniel knew him just about as well as anybody, and they hadn't been able to tell that the teenage Jack wasn't, in fact, the real Jack. Besides the age issue, there was no discernable difference between them.

"It's what he asked for, Daniel," she said gently. "He made the choice to go back to high school. The Colonel tried to talk him out of it, if you remember."

"I do," Daniel said. He looked frustrated. "But I couldn't just... Leave him there. On his own." He paused, but finally said, "Without us."

"Ah," Sam said. Finally, the crux of the issue. "So you went to see him."

"Yeah."

When he didn't continue, she prompted, "And?"

He slumped. "He told me that it'd be easier if he just cut all ties, just like Jack."

Poor Daniel. "That's what he wants, Daniel," she said. "That's why he decided to go back to high school instead of going to train at Area 51, like the Pentagon was hoping. He wants to start over."

"I _know,_" Daniel said, "I just… I had to make sure. It's…" He looked up at her, an old hurt in his expressive blue eyes. "It's _Jack,_ Sam."

She looked at him for a moment and realized something that she should have noticed years ago. In retrospect it was so obvious, she was ashamed of herself not to have known. All the signs had been there, for years, some of it from the very beginning, the very first trip she'd taken through the gate. The two of them had always had a bond, she'd seen it for herself, but it had never occurred to her that it might have meant something more. Too occupied with her own feelings to notice those of her best friend, and she knew she was going to be kicking herself over it for a good while.

Daniel was in love with Colonel O'Neill.

Just like her.

"I know," she said gently, and reached over to give his hand a comforting squeeze. He turned his hand over till he could lace his fingers with hers, and she smiled at him. "I know."

"I know you do," he said, his voice carefully neutral, but she knew what he was implying. And that he sympathized.

Then he withdrew his hand and poked at some of the papers spread out over the table. "What are you working on?" he asked, all trace of upset gone from his voice, and she knew that the topic was closed.

**-----**

"Okay," she said. "Explain this to me."

He looked so baffled; it was adorable. "What?" he asked. "What am I explaining?"

"You've been hit on three times in the last ten minutes," Sam said. "How do you do it? There's got to be a trick to it."

Daniel glanced around the bar as if the answers were going to appear out of thin air. "What, really?" he said. "Three?"

She stared at him in disbelief. "You've got to be kidding," she said. "You didn't even notice?"

"Well, no," he said. "Unless you're talking about that girl who was complimenting me on my shirt?"

It was a very nice shirt. Sam knew this because she'd picked it out. It looked good on him. "I don't think it was the shirt that she was complimenting, Daniel," Sam said, rolling her eyes. "Seriously, you're the diplomatic one, how can you possibly not notice-" She happened to look his way at the right moment and catch him grinning, his eyes twinkling at her behind the shine of the ambient light on his lenses. "Oh, you jerk," she said. "You're not as clever as you think you are."

"And yet you fall for it every time," Daniel said, smirking as he took a sip of his drink. She glared at him and smacked him hard on his upper arm, which was rather nicely padded with muscle. He barely even flinched. "Ow, okay. _I_ thought it was funny, anyway."

"You would," she muttered into her drink. "Seriously, I remember you being clueless about this kinda thing."

"Times change," he said, oddly serious all of a sudden. She cocked her head, studying him for a moment.

He was so different in some ways, she thought. He was sharper, more observant, more… _aware._ He didn't drift off into his own little world anymore, not like he used to. Sam remembered sometimes having to call his name three times or more before he finally looked up and realized she was in the room. He was fitter, too, spending long hours working out with Teal'c, joining the pool of bored young airmen in the gym for practice in hand-to-hand, stripping and cleaning his gun with absent-minded confidence while talking about some ancient culture or other. He had more sharp edges, the softness of grief and acceptance worn off and leaving pure essence of Daniel Jackson in its place, shining bright and taking crap from nobody.

And at the same time… He was still Daniel. Still one of the closest friends she had, on this world or any other. Still the only person who could really keep up with her, and vice versa. They still fed off each other's ideas, still spent time together like this, in a bar or in their own kitchens and living rooms and labs on-base and by campfires and in tents or prisons offworld. They were still the Wonder Twins, communicating on a level that no one else, especially Colonel Jack O'Neill, could ever understand.

"Yeah, they do," was all she said. And silently added, _but maybe not so much as you might think._

**-----**

The knock startled her, and Sam got up to open the door. It wasn't that late, but she wasn't exactly expecting company. Who could it be?

It was Daniel, holding two boxes of pizza and a couple disks from the rental place down the street. "Want some company?" he asked, waving the disk cases. "I got the worst ones I could find, just for you."

She burst out laughing and waved him in. Only Daniel. "You look like you're ready for a long night," she said, not minding in the least. It was a Friday, anyway, and they had the weekend off for once. "I thought you were meditating with Teal'c?"

He shrugged as he detoured into her kitchen to drop the pizza on the table. "We talked for a while instead. Afterwards I just sort of need to get out of the mountain, you know?"

"Oh yeah," she said. He was already rummaging through her cupboard for popcorn when she followed him in. "Though if it bugs you so much, why are you still in quarters? It's not like you're too poor to get a house."

"That's one of things we were talking about, actually," Daniel said. He tossed her the popcorn packet and she went over to set the microwave while he grabbed a couple beers from the fridge. She never drank more than one when she ate, he knew that, and if he was drinking beer then he was actively looking to relax, which for him, usually meant that something was wrong.

"Yeah?" she prompted, when he didn't continue. Nobody could talk like Daniel could, and in some ways he was the most open guy she knew, but sometimes you had to drag things out of him, if he was in the wrong sort of mood. Tonight looked like it was shaping up to be one of those times.

He sighed as he set the beers down on the table next to the pizza. "The fact that it finally sunk in that I'm here for good."

She paused, not really sure how to respond to that. The thought of him going off again, without them to keep him out of trouble, terrified her more than a little. And then there was hurt that she hadn't known about this- a little because he went to Teal'c instead of her, but he was here now, and most of it was because she hadn't noticed it herself, no matter how closely she'd been looking. It was a little scary how good he'd gotten at hiding his emotions. Or had he always been like this?

"I didn't know that it hadn't already," she said finally. The best way to get information out of Daniel was a simple, open-ended statement, because he had this compulsion to fill in the gaps, so unless he was really pissed at you, he almost always answered, usually with information overload. It was just the way he was.

This time was no different. "I just have so many unanswered questions about when I was Ascended, Sam," he said, all in a rush, leaning against the kitchen counter with that incredibly earnest expression on his face that made all the nurses sigh over him. "I can't remember almost anything I did, or knew, or thought or felt. I don't even know why I chose to come back, and I can't believe I chose to lose all my memories. Even now there's some spots that are just blank holes, and I'm starting to think that I'm never going to get everything back. So I guess I was just questioning my purpose here, you know? Whether or not I really belonged here, or if I was supposed to be off doing good as a higher being. Only everything I've learned makes it seem like I didn't really do all that much good as a higher being, and even then it was only when I broke the rules, so. I just… didn't know."

Oh yeah. Information overload. Luckily Sam was fluent in Daniel-speak, one of the best translators around. It wasn't all that hard to sift through and figure out what he really meant. "You were feeling lost, confused, and more than a little dislocated. And talking to Teal'c cleared things up."

"Well, I think I figured it out before the talk with Teal'c, but yeah," he said, grinning in relief that she'd gotten it. "It was all of it, the mission, saving Ry'ac and Bra'tac, and seeing Teal'c conquer his own uncertainties. Us really working as a team again, too, y'know? It brought a few memories back, but it also brought things into focus." He looked at her, intent. "This is where I'm supposed to be. It's not temporary. It's… home." He seemed a little sheepish at his description, but mostly thoughtful.

"And you talked this all out with Teal'c," Sam said.

Daniel nodded. "Which led to the conversation about maybe renting a house off-base again. Teal'c was pretty in favor of the idea, but I think he's just tired of me coming in at all hours and bugging him."

"Plus he misses your cooking," Sam pointed out. "I know I do. Teal'c never had a chance to learn, the Colonel manages steaks- most of the time- and I can practically burn water. You're the only one who knows one end of a stove from the other."

"And there aren't any stoves in quarters," he said, laughing. "Yeah, I know. Well, I'll make you a deal. You help me find the right place fast, and I'll make a feast for whoever helps me move in. Sound fair?"

"More than," she said. The microwave beeped, and she pulled the popcorn out. "All I have to do is make a few phone calls, carry a few boxes. You know you can rope Teal'c and the Colonel into doing all the heavy lifting."

"And Jack might even not complain about it," Daniel said with a grin. "Yeah, it occurred to me. Always good to make some use out of their military muscles, isn't it?"

"When they aren't saving our lives," she said dryly, and went hunting through the cabinets for a properly sized bowl. "But yeah. Geek power, activate."

He grabbed the pizza and beer and led the way into the living room. "That reminds me. We did pretty good today, didn't we? Made a pretty good team."

"Yeah, we did," she said. "I kinda liked it. Not that often we get paired off."

"Not to blow things up, anyway," he said ruefully. He grabbed a slice out of the box and added, around a mouthful of pizza, "Jack's too stingy to share the explosives."

She laughed and snagged her own piece of pizza and the beer bottle that Daniel handed her. "Well," she said, holding up the bottle. "Here's to us. We make a good team."

"That we do," Daniel said, copying her. "To us," he said, and they clinked bottles before taking a long pull of the beer.

"Just so you know, I'm not allowing you to leave the couch," Sam warned. They had this argument every. single. time they drank- which was pretty much every time- but she still believed in fair warning. "You can't hold your beer."

"Why do you think I brought three?" he retorted, brandishing the movie cases. "I know a lost cause when I see one."

"You mean you did catch a glance in the mirror today?" she said, pretending disbelief, and ducked the casual backhand he aimed at her upper arm. "Seriously, glad you're finally giving in. I was starting to think I'd have to figure out how to handcuff you to the couch one of these days."

"Kinky," he said, under his breath, but she heard him anyway and smirked at him. He didn't blush, which was a sign that Ascension had definitely weathered him a little, though how a man who got hit on as often as he did could still _blush_ had always been beyond her.

"Right," she said, and snagged the small stack of DVDs out of his hand. "What've we got?"

"I vote we start with _Boa vs. Python_," Daniel said, straight-faced.

"Oh, hey, I know that one," she said.

"You want me to put on something else?"

"Nah," she said. "The snake doctor's pretty cute. I say we go for it."

"Excellent," Daniel said, and took another bite of pizza. He leaned back into the cushions, she put the movie in and started it, and when she returned to the couch she settled in next to him, though the couch could easily seat four, if they were a little on the thin side.

"Popcorn," he demanded, and she passed it to him, grabbing a handful for herself while coordinating taking a bite of her pizza with her free hand. They settled down and watched the opening credits of the movie in silence.

Yeah, Sam thought. They made a good team.

**-----**

"I give up," Daniel announced as she came into his lab. "You hear me, world? This is me giving up."

"Daniel, we've talked about this," she admonished, hiding a smile. "No giving up on company time. They frown on that kind of thing."

He glared at her, his eyes bloodshot and his jaw unshaven. He'd obviously been here all night, working, and he looked so utterly frazzled and fed up that she just wanted to go over there and ruffle his hair. It was adorable.

"You see this?" he demanded, hefting the huge book that was open in front of him. "You see it?"

"I could hardly miss it," she pointed out. "It's gotta be like a thousand pages long."

He slammed it shut and let it drop with a loud thud on the table. "Eight hundred, actually, and it's useless! All these books, all the reference material Uncle Sam was kind enough to pay for? All useless!"

"Daniel," she began, then caught sight of his heated glare and hurriedly changed tack. "Right. Useless. I can see that. It's not like you've used them to decipher languages that have been dead on Earth for thousands of years, or anything like that. I don't know why we bothered to pay for them. Hell, I don't know why we hired you!"

"Very funny," he muttered. "Seriously, Sam, I just can't crack this. It's just gibberish to me."

"Oh wow, Daniel Jackson running into something he can't understand," Sam said with mock sympathy. "How does it feel to be one of the normal people for a change?"

"Oh, shut up," he grumbled. "They just wander in here and dump everything on my desk when I'm out and expect me to work miracles. I have work of my own, you know. A lot of it. And I don't even know what planet this is from!"

Taking pity on him, she nudged him aside and went through the file folder that had been left with the tablet. "Oh, that's from the alien world."

"They're all alien, Sam."

She bumped his shoulder with her hip. "Funny," she said. "No, I mean the _really_ alien one Feretti and SG-3 were on a few days ago. You know, the one where everything was red and blue and they swore the bugs were talking to them?"

"Oh, no wonder I can't translate it," Daniel said, nudging the book aside and concentrating on the tablet again. "It's probably not based on any human system of communication at all."

She saw him getting focused on the chicken scratches again and prudently yanked it out of his hands. "You're just going to get frustrated again," she said. "You are not Super Linguist. Give it to the guys who specialize in alien languages and take your revenge on Feretti for bringing it here in the first place."

"It would have been him, wouldn't it," Daniel said thoughtfully, and then shrugged. "Fine. Less work for me."

Daniel had grown up, Sam thought admiringly. Time was he wouldn't have let that tablet out of his sight. Apparently he'd finally learned that he couldn't do everything and then some. It was a lesson hard-earned, but necessary. He could half-kill himself with work trying to keep up if people gave him more than he could handle.

"Why're you here, anyway?" Daniel asked. "Not that it's not nice seeing you, but I assume you wanted something?"

"Yeah, lunch," she said. "Teal'c's kelnorim-ing, and Janet's busy patching up SG-9. You're up, pal."

"No, I really have to finish-" His stomach interrupted him with a very audible grumble. "Um. Or, maybe I could eat."

"Yes, you could," she said with a grin. "When was breakfast, anyway?"

"Um," he said again. "Breakfast?"

"Definitely time for lunch," she decided, and pulled him out of his chair for emphasis. "Now."

"Yes, mistress," he teased, letting himself be pulled along by her grip on his wrist. "Is there anything else your worship wants?"

"Oh, I can think of all sorts of things," she started, but stopped when they almost ran over O'Neill. "Uh, hello, sir," she said, dropping Daniel's wrist and standing up straight and generally pretending like she hadn't just been goofing around and semi-flirting with their linguist.

"Carter," the Colonel said, arching an eyebrow. "Where's the fire?"

"Lunch, Jack," Daniel cut in smoothly, tipping a wink to Sam. "Most important meal of the day."

"I thought that was breakfast," O'Neill said.

"Well, I skipped breakfast," Daniel said. "So now we're getting lunch."

"Right, of course," the Colonel said, and made a big deal of stepping out of their way. "Don't let me get in your way."

"I never do," Daniel said easily, and walked off. Sam followed him, trying hard to contain a straight face at O'Neill's gaping expression at the blithe insult.

"I can't believe you just said that!" she gasped when they reached the relative safety of the elevator. "Even for you, Daniel, that was-"

"The absolute truth," he interrupted, grinning. "Besides. Did you see his face?"

She nodded, hand clapped over her mouth to hold in the giggles. His grin got wider.

"He's going to make you pay for that, you know," she warned him once she'd gotten herself under control. "He never forgets that sort of thing."

"I know," Daniel said as they got off the elevator. "But it was so, so worth it."

"Yeah," she said, picturing O'Neill's face again. "It kind of was."

**-----**

"Hello," Sam called, stepping through the doorway. "Anybody home?"

"Back here!" she heard Janet call back, and she followed the sound of her voice back into the kitchen, where Janet was stirring a boiling pot while a disinterested Cassie sat at the island nearby.

"Sam!" Cassie said, and ran to hug her. Sam hugged her back as tightly as she could, inwardly marveling at the size of her. Once Cassie had been a little girl she'd been able to carry in her arms- now Cassandra was taller than she was, with a dancer's muscled body.

She was also looking just as rebellious-teenager as Sam remembered, plus some. On her eighteenth birthday she had gleefully died her hair just about every color of the rainbow and gotten her nose pierced, much to her mother's dismay. College had added a few more colors that Sam was pretty sure didn't occur in nature as well as several more rings in each ear and one in her lip, and had removed most of her long hair so that it was curling around the back of her neck and through the hoops in her ear lobes.

"Hey, Cassie," she said, and then stepped back and let her go. "I heard you were in town, and your mom said I could come over for dinner."

Cassie looked crestfallen. "I can't," she said. "I already made dinner plans for tonight, and I'm afraid I won't be able to catch him at all if I cancel."

Sam was disappointed, too, but she knew it was her own fault for assuming that she'd be welcome for dinner any night, like she used to be in the days before Cassie went off to college. And she was welcome, she knew that, but Cassie wasn't a kid anymore, and she didn't have to ask her mother for permission before she went on a date.

So she just shrugged and grinned and wrapped one arm around Cassie's shoulders companionably. "Dinner plans, huh? Who's the lucky guy? Anyone I know?"

"Pretty well," Cassie said dryly, and Sam didn't get the joke until she heard the front door open and Daniel's cheerful "Hellooo?" echo back from the front hall.

"In the kitchen, Daniel," Janet yelled back, and a minute later Daniel appeared, looking handsome as ever in tailored slacks and an expensive linen shirt, rolled midway up his forearms. A lot of people, herself included, looked like totally different people when they were out of uniform. Daniel just looked like Daniel.

Cassie ran to give him a hug, too, and he grinned at Sam over her shoulder as he hugged her tight enough to almost pick her up off the ground. Cassie squealed like a little girl when he went one further and did pick her up, and twirl her around like she was twelve again. The Colonel had taken to Cassie immediately and the part of her that was still a scared girl from another planet still had a special place in her heart for the man who'd made her smile and laugh and feel safe, but it was Daniel who'd spent almost as much time as Sam in this house, and Daniel who'd spent six patient months in the aftermath of Nirrti's experiment, starting with a spoiled teenager who couldn't get along with her adopted mother and ending up, by dint of his own generosity of spirit and overall Daniel-ness, with a beautiful, self-assured young woman who worshipped the ground he walked on. Her mother could have lived without the piercings and hair dye that Daniel had done absolutely nothing to discourage, but it was under Daniel's tutelage that Cassie had finally gotten serious about her dream of going to medical school, which more than made up for it, in Janet's opinion.

He set her down finally, and messed up her hair with one easy, affectionate ruffle. It was something that the Colonel would do, since Daniel was normally impeccable about respecting people's personal space, but they'd all learned something from O'Neill. After this long together, all four of them had bled over into each other a little bit. Daniel was the most visibly affected, with Teal'c not far behind, but Sam knew herself to be a different woman than the one who'd walked into the briefing room that first day, and she knew that Colonel wasn't the same, either.

"You ready to go?" Daniel asked Cassie, who was grinning and not at all upset by the damage done to her carefully combed hair.

"Just gotta get my jacket!" she said, and almost ran out of the room. Daniel shook his head fondly after her and turned back to the two of them, smiling easily.

"Hey, Sam," he said. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"I just dropped by to say hello," Sam said. "I didn't know you were taking her out tonight."

"I can postpone, if you need me to," Daniel offered, but Sam shook her head, laughing.

"Don't think Cass will let you," she pointed out.

"True enough," he said ruefully.

"She'll be here all week, anyway. At least in theory; God knows who might drag her off next," Janet said, and then Cassie came back into the room, a denim jacket slung over her shoulder, effectively ending the discussion.

"Okay, now I'm ready," she said, and Daniel waved to Sam and Janet.

"See you two tomorrow," he said, and Cassie waved to her mom too and then headed out the door.

"She better be back by midnight!" Janet yelled after Daniel, and cackled when they heard him trip over the doorframe before very pointedly shutting the door. "I do it every single time, and it still gets to him," she confided to Sam, who wasn't even bothering to hide her smile. "It never gets old."

"Teasing Daniel never does," Sam said, and poked her nose into the sauce pot on the stove. "Need any help?"

"Does getting out of the way before your curse descends on my kitchen count?" Janet asked dryly. Sam laughed and retreated to the island, not taking any offense. She knew what she was like in the kitchen. _Everyone_ knew what she was like in the kitchen. She'd learned to take a bizarre sort of pride in her complete and total ineptitude.

During dinner, which was delicious as always, Janet's look took on a particularly wicked cast, and Sam braced herself for something outrageous. She wasn't disappointed.

"So," she said. "You're on a team with the three best-looking guys in the mountain. Don't you ever want to just… take a little nibble?"

"_Janet!"_ Sam said. "You _know_ I can't. There's rules about that kind of thing, if you've forgotten."

"Well, okay, not the Colonel," Janet admitted. "There'd be a lot of trouble there." Sam nodded, slightly surprised at how much it sucked hearing her own depressing reasoning repeated aloud. "But Teal'c, or Daniel. They're both fine-looking men, and god knows you all love each other to death. Why not?"

"Teal'c's seeing Ishta, remember?"

"The warrior Jaffa woman, right?"

"That's the one. He actually gets dreamy-eyed over her, which is a hell of a thing to see. No way am I upsetting that applecart, even if I'd ever considered doing something like that, which I haven't."

"And Daniel?" Janet prompted.

Sam frowned. "He's… I don't know. He's just… _Daniel._ There's never been anything like that between us." Plus Daniel kinda had a thing for someone else who was pretty much off-limits to him, but Sam would never betray a secret like that, even to Janet.

"Sam, honey, you must be incredibly blind," Janet said, shaking her head. "Half the mountain's in love with that boy, bless his heart, and you don't even look twice?"

"I've looked," Sam protested. "But it's not… He's… Daniel. You know. He's my best friend, I guess, and I love him to death, and I trust him at my back offworld, but it's just… not like that. Okay?"

"If you say so," Janet said dubiously. "Personally, if I were you, I'd think twice about that and just go for it, but that's me." She shrugged, offered a bowl. "More pasta?"

"No thanks," Sam said, and that was the end of the conversation about Daniel. She was relieved- Janet got weird ideas sometimes, and this one was downright ridiculous. Sam was glad not to be talking about it anymore.

Later, though, much later- she found that she couldn't quite get it out of her mind.

**-----**

The Colonel was standing by Daniel's hospital bed when Sam came in. She hesitated at the doorway, not sure she wanted to interrupt, but eventually she decided to stop being a pussy and stepped in with a casual, "Hey."

"Sam!" Daniel turned to her with the look of a drowning man who's just been thrown a rope. "It's good to see you." He cast a desperate glanced at Jack, and then a pleading one back to her. "Really, really good."

That bad, huh?

She hesitated again, wanting to ask him what was up, beyond the splitting headache and plethora of tests that had gotten him stuck here, but not knowing how, not with O'Neill standing right there. His smug grin gave it away a little, but how to-

Oh.

"So I was looking through the most recent diagnostics of the _Prometheus_ life support system," she said casually, dropping into the code that she and Daniel had come up with once, years ago, drunk together and a little fed up with Colonel O'Neill and his disdain for all things not explosive. "Think you could maybe take a look at it with me?"

Translation: _What the hell is going on?_

Daniel looked blank for a second, and then his gaze sharpened as he realized what she was doing. "Why, you think there might be a bug in the system?" he asked. _You talking about Jack?_

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time." _Yeah._

"It's unlikely," he said. "It's not all that serious, is it? Not everything's all that dangerous. Some things are just annoying." _He's just being himself, and driving me crazy with it._

She hid a smile. O'Neill tended to blank out when they started talking about anything technical, and they'd gotten away with this for years. Normally the Colonel was an extremely canny person, far more perceptive than he let on, but to date he'd never even noticed that they were talking in code, much less what they were actually talking about.

"Well, you're probably right," she said. _If you say so._

"I'm always right," he retorted. _I say so._

"Why Daniel, I didn't know you were boning up on engineering," O'Neill said. "What'd it take to drag you away from your musty books and into the current millennium?"

"I think engineering is fascinating," Daniel said with an absolutely straight face. Sam had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

The Colonel gave Daniel a suspicious once-over, evidently checking to make sure that having a temporary case of forced Multiple Personality Disorder hadn't scrambled his brains worse than the headache they'd all gotten. "Well, whatever," O'Neill said, and slapped his arm affectionately. "Get better soon, will ya? I've got hockey tickets for tomorrow."

"Oh joy," Daniel said, and just smiled when the Colonel shot him a narrow-eyed look.

"Behave yourself," he said, and nodded to Sam. "Carter. Don't let him translate anything, okay?"

"I'll do my best, sir," she said, and managed to wait until he was well away from the infirmary doors before collapsing onto Daniel's bed and laughing herself sick.

"Daniel, you are unbelievable. 'I think engineering is fascinating?'" she mimicked, and Daniel grinned back at her.

"Well, it is the way we talk about it."

"Some day he's going to figure us out, you know," she pointed out. "And on that day he's gonna be _pissed._"

He rolled his eyes. "He'll never get it. As soon as he hears anything vaguely science-like, he might as well have his fingers stuck in his ears saying, 'la, la, la' for all the attention he pays us."

That image sparked a fresh round of snickering. "Alright, but if he does get it? I'm totally blaming you."

"Why me?" he demanded.

"It was your idea!"

"Oh, right. Well, in my defense, I was drunk."

She thought back to the night in question. "Oh, yeah," she said with feeling. "You were not alone."

"Speaking of," he said leadingly. "When are we going out again?"

She frowned at him and tapped his forehead with two fingers. "Not this weekend, that's for sure," she said. "You're gonna be stuck here until Janet is damned sure that you're none the worse for your little adventure."

He slumped dejectedly back into his pillows. "I know," he sighed. "It's just that I really hate this place. I never get any decent rest when I'm here."

"Aw, come on, there's a few upsides," she said.

"Oh yeah? Like what?" He didn't seem to believe her. She was hurt by his lack of faith, really, she was.

"Well, all the nurses are in love with you," she teased. "Just think, after all the sponge baths, you'll be the cleanest guy on base."

"Oh, _thank_ you," he said sarcastically. "I'm not crippled, you know. I'm allowed to stand up. To take showers on my own, even."

"Hey, I have it on very good authority that most of the nurses around here are serious hotties," Sam said. "You should accept your doom a little more gratefully."

"Whose authority?" Daniel asked, momentarily sidetracked. Or maybe just trying to change the subject. Hard to tell, with Daniel.

"The Colonel's," Sam said. "Not that he realized I was listening, but it's hard to ignore when he's so cheerfully shouting two feet away in the weight room."

"Ah," Daniel said. "Well, not that I don't see the truth of his enlightened opinion, but I'm not really interested, so I refuse to accept my doom. They'll just have to capture and forcibly sponge-bathe some other archaeologist."

She didn't ask why he wasn't interested. She knew perfectly well that his interest lay elsewhere and had for years. She sympathized. But that didn't mean she couldn't tease him.

"I don't know, Daniel," she said, her voice doubtful. "They're not usually as cute as you are. I think some of them have watched Indiana Jones one too many times."

"Oh, stop," he muttered.

"I'm sure they'd be perfectly willing to supply the hat and bullwhip if you don't have any of your own…"

He groaned and buried his face in his pillow.

**-----**

"And as the candle burns low, our time here together comes to a close," the minister droned. "It has been a long night, but we rejoice in the newfound friendship with these, our cousins. We shall take a moment to quietly contemplate our good fortune."

Sam stifled a yawn and saw, out of the corner of her eye, that the Colonel was doing the same. Even Daniel's eyes were drooping a little, though he hadn't succumbed to the mind-numbing boredom of the speeches the same way they were. Only Teal'c was unaffected, sitting as upright and alert as he ever was. Or maybe he was kelnorim-ing with his eyes open. You never knew with Teal'c.

They'd been sitting here since sunset, listening to the minister talk. The candle that the guy was talking about was almost a foot tall. Apparently this was their idea of celebrating a new trade alliance with Earth, by gathering all the important people together in a circle- as well as their important guests, can't forget them, nosiree- and having their minister wax eloquent about their good fortune. For hours. And hours, and hours.

And then, finally, the moment was over and so was the assembly, and the very important guests were free to get the hell out of there and _go to bed._ Not that she hadn't gone without way less sleep than this, of course, but pulling an all-nighter on an experiment was a completely different thing than getting stuck in a nightmare version of Congress. Or worse, her freshman physics class.

They'd all been assigned separate rooms, but the Colonel had shot that one down from the start. He never allowed them to sleep separately offworld, and he'd split them up the same way he always did- her with Teal'c, him with Daniel. It had started out that way because everyone knew that Teal'c could be trusted not to take any sort of advantage of her (the very thought was laughable- this was _Teal'c_ they were talking about) and O'Neill had wanted to stick close to Daniel, who in the beginning would wander off ten seconds after waking up if he had an idea. Daniel was different now, as battle-ready as any soldier in the SGC and better than some, but the sleeping arrangements had been set for a long time by that point, and barring sickness, alien influence, or Cold War-level Jackson/O'Neill arguments, that was the way they stayed.

They all split up to collect their things before going off to bed, and just after Sam had grabbed her pack from where it was slouched against the back wall, she was stopped right by the foot of the steps by Nark'on, a small, nervous-looking councilman. _So close to freedom,_ she thought, and turned around to face him, pasting on the uncomfortable smile that was the best she could do when faced with situations like this (or more extreme circumstances, such as people like Rodney McKay.) "Hello, Nark'on," she said politely. "What can I do for you?"

About half an hour later, she'd finally cooled down enough to go back to her room and try to sleep. She stopped in the doorway, surprised, when she saw that instead of Teal'c sitting cross-legged on the second bed, meditating, there was Daniel, still awake and scribbling in his journal.

"Jack was being a dick, so I switched with Teal'c, hope you don't mind," he said, still writing. He finished his sentence and then capped his pen, setting the journal aside and looking up at her, eyes bright with curiosity and lingering irritation. "Your name featured prominently in his rant, but he couldn't be bothered to actually _tell_ me why. What happened?"

"You know Nark'on?"

"Squeaky little councilman," Daniel said immediately.

"Yeah, that's him. Well, he caught me before I could make it out of the hall, and the damn man _proposed_ to me."

"You've had that happen before," Daniel said.

"I know!" she said. "And I know how to handle that sort of situation, since, y'know, it _has_ happened before. But before I had a chance to say anything, the Colonel came storming over and loomed a lot and said a lot of really undiplomatic things and scared the crap out of the poor man, who wasn't exactly sober since apparently he had to have a little liquid courage before he proposed."

"Well, that's Jack," Daniel said philosophically. "I'd like to say that was out-of-character for him, but we both know that'd be a lie."

"Oh, but wait- there's more," she said. "After he sent Nark'on running, I open my mouth to thank him- because he did step in for me, even if I could have handled it myself, and that's just the Colonel, right? But before I could say anything, he turns on me and starts yelling at _me,_ saying that I should have known better to _encourage_ Nark'on, that I was careless to let myself be cornered into that sort of situation. Like I did it on purpose! I told him what he could do with his opinion and got the hell out of there. I've been up on the castle walls for a while, cooling off."

Daniel just sat there for a long moment, considering. Then he held out a hand to her, inviting, and she closed the distance between them willingly, taking his hand and letting him pull her down onto the bed beside him.

"He does stuff like this, sometimes," Daniel said softly. "I didn't think he'd do it to you- he's always respected you too much to let it get to that point, but he's been… different, since I came back. He got really close to you, and Teal'c, while I was gone, didn't he?"

"Yeah," she said. "I guess he did. We all did." She twisted around to see his face. "He's done this before?"

"He does it to me all the time," Daniel said. "He always has. Not quite the same way, not over the same things- but yes, it's one of the more unpleasant trademarks of the bizarre Jack O'Neill personality we all know and- love." The pause before the last word was tiny but noticeable. "He lets himself care too much, always has. But he's usually pretty good at hiding it, until you get so close he can't anymore, and then it's like he gives up. He blows hot, showers you with affection and charm and his own unique style of protection, and then he seems to realize what he's doing, and then he pulls back, shuts down, turns on you. The bad parts never last very long- he'll probably have forgotten about it by tomorrow."

"Well, I won't," she muttered rebelliously. "And I don't know how you could, either."

"I don't," Daniel said. "I never forget who Jack is and what he's capable of, and if you let yourself, you're setting yourself up for a lot of heartache. Don't let yourself forget, but the fights, the shutdowns, the silent treatment- it's worth the inevitable backlash to get the good parts. The full Jack O'Neill treatment."

"Yeah," she whispered. She'd known, of course, realized it a while ago, but it maybe hadn't really sunk in till now, how similar she and Daniel were in so many ways. Right down to the man they loved- stupidly, mercilessly, without hope. Because Sam knew that the Colonel (_Jack,_ she thought fiercely, if she was going to think like this he was going to be Jack) might be attracted to her, that he cared for her more than he should, but it wasn't going to happen. Not ever. And Daniel… it was harder on Daniel than it was on her, she suspected. She'd had a thing for Jack for the start, but it had taken them years to build to the closeness they shared now, and Daniel… Daniel had had it from the start. Maybe Daniel was stronger than they even knew, to be so amazingly close to the man he loved and know that it wasn't going to happen. She didn't know of anyone but Daniel who could taken everything Jack offered and be happy enough not to hope for anything more. Oh, the first years maybe, when he'd been looking for Sha're, those would have been different- but after her death, when all that Daniel had left was them, SG-1 and Jack in particular- oh yes, she thought. Daniel was stronger than any of them knew.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly, impulsively. After a startled pause he returned the embrace, one brawny arm around her shoulders and his other hand spread on her lower back, radiating heat and comfort on the sensitive cluster of nerves. She let out a deep breath on a sigh and relaxed into him, taking strength from his, and he had such a bottomless well of it, so much to spare for her when she was lost and confused. It had always been that way; she just forgot, sometimes, how much he could hold everyone up when they needed it.

After a minute or so, she found herself getting a little distracted by the hard curve of muscle pressed under her cheek. Just a little distracted, mind you, but it was enough to bother her, because she didn't think about Daniel that way, and he certainly didn't think about her, and here they were comforting each other over their mutual lovesickness for a certain Colonel O'Neill and so what was she doing noticing Daniel's muscles? Wasn't she fucked up enough, already? She didn't need this, not on top of everything else. Not tonight.

But then Daniel's arm tightened a little on her shoulders, and she realized that she was acting like an idiot, thankfully only in the privacy of her own head, and that she should definitely just stop now, and enjoy the moment she was given. So she hugged him back just a little tighter too, and sat in comfortable silence with her friend.

**-----**

"I can't believe you, Daniel," Sam scolded. "I leave for one lousy little mission and you get shot."

"And tortured," Daniel pointed out helpfully. "Can't forget the torture."

"Oh of course, how silly of me," she said, her voice flat. "And tortured, of course. How do you manage to get yourself into this kind of trouble, anyway?"

"Blind luck?" Daniel offered. He winced as the nurse patched up yet another burn wound on his bare chest. Seconds later she echoed it as her nurse carefully moved her arm into position for a less makeshift sling. "Obviously my fairy godmother hasn't been paying much attention lately."

"Are you talking about Oma Desala, or someone else?"

He shot her a dirty look. "I'm talking about my entirely hypothetical fairy godmother, thank you."

"Well, sorry, but you are the one guy I know who does have a woman with extra-special powers who _glows_ looking out for him. You _could_ have been talking about her." Her nurse finished securing the sling and left her with a pat on the shoulder and a prescription for painkillers in her good hand.

"Well, I didn't, and I bet she wouldn't exactly like the comparison."

"Yeah, she's not really the Tinkerbell type, I guess. More like an Angel of Death."

"Who, Doc Fraser?" Jack said from the doorway. "I could have sworn I gave her a good talking-to about slipping the patients arsenic, but I guess she didn't listen."

"We were actually talking about Oma Desala, sir," Sam said. Jack nodded and looked thoughtful.

"You're right, not much of a Tinkerbell at all. For one thing, Tinkerbell didn't look even a little bit like a squid."

"Oh, yeah," Daniel said. "I've been meaning to ask. You said I appeared a couple times when I was a higher being. Did I ever look a bit…"

"Squid-like?" Sam offered.

"Yes, that."

"Nah," Jack said. "You had a really stupid haircut and you kept wearing this white sweater that made you look chunky, but there were no glowing tentacles in sight."

"Well, that's a… relief," Daniel said dubiously. "Thanks, Jack. I can always count on you to make me feel better."

"Don't worry, Daniel," Sam told him, keeping her face innocent and her voice incredibly earnest. "You don't look even a little chunky in uniform."

"Gee, thanks," Daniel said, looking not even a little thankful. "Well, Jack, I know why Sam's sitting here tormenting me; she had to get her arm wrapped. What's your excuse?"

"Just stoppin' by to see if you maybe wanted to crash at my place for a few days, get a few square meals you don't have to cook while you get used to those crutches of yours."

"Well, thanks for the offer, but I'm actually staying at Sam's," Daniel said. Jack's sharp-edged gaze switched immediately to her face, which she kept bland by dint of sheer force of will. After a moment, Jack looked back at Daniel, sitting there looking oddly comfortable despite the cuts and burns all over his chest and the bruises all over his handsome face.

"Gonna be quite a slapstick routine over there, with your busted leg and her busted wing," Jack said finally.

"Yes, well, we figure that between the two of us we equal out to one whole person, so we should be able to get along fine," Daniel said. "Besides, I don't have to move around much to cook us some dinner, and I'm pretty sure Sam can handle the remote left-handed, so we're pretty much set for a weekend of recuperation."

"Well, as long as you're sure," Jack said. "Got a few steaks I can burn, if you change your mind. You too, Carter," he added, glancing at her. She just smiled, blandly.

"As tempting as that sounds, sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline," she said. She hesitated for a second, weighing the risqué nature of her comment with the potential comedy value of the look on Jack's face, then just went for it. "I like my meat rare."

She wasn't disappointed. Jack's eyes widened to comical proportions, and his mouth even fell open a little bit in surprise. So there, she thought, oddly smug. I'm not just Carter the Geek after all, remember?

Beside her, Daniel was choking on laughter. "How rare?" he asked, once his giggle fit wore down a little. "Do you even like to slap it on the pan a few times, or do you want it running around the plate mooing?"

"Cows, Daniel, are not exactly my kink."

He snorted. "Tell that to Lieutenant Ferrell. He gets completely calf-eyed every time you walk into the room."

"Respect for my intellectual superiority," she informed him.

"Cru-ush," he sing-songed.

"You have _no_ idea what you're talking about."

"I'm the diplomatic contact expert, remember? I pay attention to these things."

"Yeah, I'm sure knowing who's casting _hypothetical _longing glances at who is really going to help the next time we've got people pointing guns or spears at us."

"Hey, you never know," he protested. "All information is good information, remember?"

"Unless, of course, it's _incorrect,_" she retorted. His eyes narrowed, and then it was really on.

Five minutes later, they both looked up to see the doorway empty. Jack was gone, and they'd both been so wrapped up in their argument that they hadn't even noticed him leaving.

**-----**

"Huh," Jack said, peering out of the cave at the whirling wall of white. "I'm pretty sure the meteorologist didn't predict this one on the TV this morning."

"I'm pretty sure your local TV weatherman doesn't predict offworld weather, Jack," Daniel said. "I think someone would have noticed if he'd started doing that sort of thing."

"You never know," Jack said darkly. Sam exchanged an amused glance with Daniel, then cleared her throat and waited for Jack to turn around and stop his internalized paranoid anti-weatherman thoughts.

"It looks like we're not going to be going anywhere for a while, sir," she said. "Should we go to Plan B?"

"Batten down the hatches and wait out the storm," Jack agreed. "We've got a ton of firewood in here and blankets in our packs, so we should be set for a while."

"Who's turn is it to make the fire?" Daniel asked.

"I think it's Teal'c's," Jack said quickly.

"It is in fact your turn, O'Neill," Teal'c said reprovingly.

"Daniel?" Jack tried.

"No," Daniel said. It wasn't a tone that invited debate.

"Don't even look at me, sir," Sam said. "I had it on our last mission."

"Oh, fine," Jack muttered, and bent to start building the fire.

Minutes later, they had their packs unpacked into a cozy little camp with Jack's fire at the center. There was nothing they could do about the gusts of freezing air coming through the narrow entrance of the cave, though, and Sam and Daniel took one look at their relatively thin camp blankets and decided to combine forces.

"Body heat," Daniel announced, as Sam settled in next to him. "Any takers?"

"I am well," Teal'c said composedly. He managed to look utterly dignified, even sitting cross-legged next to a fire with a blanket wrapped around his broad shoulders like a boy at summer camp. Sam sometimes wondered if Teal'c could look dignified anywhere.

"Sir?" Sam offered.

"I'm good, thanks," Jack said. He was sitting close enough to the fire to practically be in it, shoulders hunched and the blanket wrapped tightly around him. His teeth chattered slightly as he said, "You two have fun, though."

"Macho," Daniel whispered into her ear, and she giggled. He took both their blankets and wound them around them, until he'd created a cozy cocoon, quickly warmed by the heat of his body.

"It's not fair how much more body heat guys have than girls," she told him. "I'm always cold, and you never are."

"I didn't used to be this much of a furnace, I don't think," he said. "It seems to me that my metabolism has been way higher since I Descended, but I could just be remembering it wrong."

"Well, whatever the cause, I'm glad you're here," she said. "I'd be freezing my tail off otherwise."

"Or your nose," he said, and buried his own cold nose behind her ear to prove his point. She gave a smothered shriek of outrage and wriggled around furiously, attempting to get a hand free of the tangle of blankets to smack him away.

She was aware of Jack's eyes on them the whole time, while Daniel caught her hands just before she could get him and held her still, laughingly apologizing and pulling her closer, into a more comfortable position. They ended up with her sitting between his splayed knees with her back against his chest, one forearm wrapped around her midriff to hold her close against him. She sighed and let her head fall back against his shoulder, lulled by his heat and utterly familiar scent, and did her best to ignore her commander's searching gaze. There wasn't anything here for him to figure out, and even if there was, it wasn't any of his business.

The cave fell quiet after that; Teal'c was meditating, Jack was apparently successfully muffling his chattering teeth, and Daniel seemed to be lost in thought. Sam decided to follow his example and closed her eyes, letting her mind drift comfortably as she settled into a light half-doze.

Gradually, though, she became aware of something else- a blunt pressure against the small of her back. She was pretty sure that it wasn't Daniel's belt buckle, and it sure as hell wasn't his gun, since that was sitting next to them, in easy reach and plain view. Daniel was aroused, from sitting here with her.

He wasn't the only one. Noticing his arousal made her aware of the low-level heat in her own belly, brought on not by some idle fantasy but from the press of Daniel's utterly familiar and startlingly attractive body against hers. It wasn't like she hadn't ever noticed how handsome he was, but she'd never allowed her mind to go there.

Well, almost never. It had happened once before, on another alien world, when Daniel had held her close like this- but she'd put it out of her mind just as quickly as it had entered, and she'd kept it away from her conscious thoughts ever since. She'd had more than enough problems without adding this to the mix.

But now- well, it felt like some of her problems were maybe putting themselves into perspective, and this didn't feel much like a problem at all, anymore. It felt right. Sam had never been much of one for sexual frustration- if she had an itch, she scratched it, one way or another, or she suppressed it until it was effectively nullified. But she felt oddly comfortable, just sitting here enjoying the feel of her best friend's hard-on, and judging from the relaxed, sleepy cast of his body, he was pretty comfortable with it too. It was just… easy.

For the first time in months, she allowed herself to think about Janet's advise. Just go for it, huh? It couldn't possibly be as simple as all that. There were a million reasons why doing something with Daniel wasn't a good idea- a million good, sensible reasons. But Sam was pretty damn tired of being sensible, and if she trusted anyone in this world or anyone else, it was Daniel.

Logic told her that she shouldn't do anything about this. But still, she sat there, watching the snow through half-closed eyes, and wondered.

**-----**

"You were really annoying."

Daniel stopped in the middle of her kitchen, a bag of Chinese takeout in one hand, looking perplexed. "Uh, Sam? I wasn't even _there._"

"No, not in _reality,_ no," Sam said. "But you kind of were. Apparently you were an image from my subconscious, dredged up as a hallucination to tell me things."

"Interesting," Daniel said. "And what did I say?"

"Well," Sam said, "first you tried to get me to study the cloud instead of try to get _out_ of it, and then you wanted me to talk to it."

Daniel blinked. "Was there… anyone else, you were seeing?"

"Well, Teal'c tried to keep me awake because of my concussion and was worried about me divulging stuff to the enemy, and Dad wants me to be happy, and apparently I'm not because I've never fallen in love like he did with Mom." She shrugged, aiming for casual and failing miserably. "Oh, and there was this little girl- I still don't know what that was about."

Daniel shrugged back, and set the food down on the table. "So it's just me that was talking crazy. Thanks a lot."

"Hey," she said. "No blaming me for my subconscious."

"Then no blaming me for being annoying," he pointed out, and they both settled down to dinner.

A few minutes later, Daniel said, "Speaking of annoying, Jack was a real pain in the ass while you were gone."

She looked up at him, trying to act like her heart wasn't suddenly beating harder. "Yeah?"

"Teal'c said he was a lot like you, when Jack was missing with Maybourne," Daniel said. "I wouldn't know, since I was sitting that one out, but I'd bet that you were never that rude."

"Don't count on it," Sam said. "I can be a real bitch when I want to be." Pause. "He was really worried?"

"Yes," Daniel said gently. "You know he was."

"Yeah, I know, it's just…" She trailed off.

"I know," he said, and he did, and it made her smile at him, even though she used to think that nothing could ever make her smile about this.

They finished up dinner in relative silence and cleaned up the table together- Sam throwing away the trash and Daniel doing the dishes. She went over to stand by him, picking up a dishtowel and drying the dishes as he handed them to her, one by one.

"He was there, too," she said finally.

"I thought he might be," Daniel said. "What did he tell you?"

"He told me to go save the day, that I'd think of something." Another dish, and another. Daniel just waited. "He called me Samantha," she admitted. "He had me call him Jack."

"I know," he said. She glanced over at him. "Infirmary," he explained. "Did you really think I wouldn't be there?"

"No, I guess not." She sighed, dried another dish. Jack always held the bedside vigil, no matter who was in the hospital bed. But no matter what imaginary promises Jack had made to her on that ship, she knew perfectly well that it was Daniel who was really there for her.

"What else did he say?"

She supposed she shouldn't be surprised that Daniel knew she'd been keeping something back. He really did know her that well. "He told me that it's not really about him," she said. "That the regs aren't really the problem, it's me. That I only want him because I know I can't have him."

"Hmm," Daniel said, and they finished the dishes in silence.

In the living room, Daniel puts the movie in while she grabs two beers. He takes his when she hands it to him, but he frowns. "Are you sure you should be drinking that? I mean, your concussion…"

She shakes her head. Janet had given her a clean bill of health before letting her off base. "I'm fine, Daniel," she says, and sits down next to him. "I drank at Jack's earlier, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did," he said. "Though I figured it was just to get the taste of Jack's cake out of your mouth."

"Yes, well," she said, and smiled a little. "He really can't bake, can he."

"He can grill things," Daniel said. "Sometimes. That's about the limit of his skill in the kitchen."

"Something we have in common, then," she said, and it reminded her of what they were talking about, and she fell silent. Daniel didn't do anything, just glanced over at her briefly, nodded once at whatever he saw, and started the movie.

They both got a little drunk, enough that they were giggling at the ending. She slid downwards till her head was pillowed on his shoulder, and just stared up at the ceiling, listening to the cheesy music as the credits rolled.

Daniel hit the mute button with his thumb and set the remote down, his hand going to her hair. He gently smoothed it off her forehead, careful to avoid the healing bump, and just watched her, an unreadable look on his face. She thought that his small, upside-down smile was the sweetest thing she'd ever seen.

"He was wrong, you know," Daniel said a minute later.

"Who was?" Sam mumbled, half-asleep from the soothing stroke of Daniel's careful fingers.

"Your dad," Daniel said. "Or your subconscious image of your dad. He was wrong."

"About what?" she asked absently. If she concentrated, she could feel the individual calluses on Daniel's fingers, pens and archaeological tools and the one, right there on his index finger, that can't be from anything but the trigger of his gun. She has one just like it, in the same place.

"You've been in love," Daniel said. "Maybe it wasn't the same thing your parents shared, but that doesn't make it any less real."

She was abruptly wide-awake. "Daniel…" she started, and then stopped. She didn't have anything to say.

"And maybe Jack was right," Daniel continued inexorably. "Or you were. Maybe you want him because you can't have him. That doesn't make the wanting any easier."

She half-wanted him to take it back, because they didn't talk about this. They might talk _around_ it sometimes, but they never, ever talked about it. Only now, they were talking about it. And she had no idea what to do with that.

"How do you know?" she asked, a bit resentfully. He just smiled, tiredly.

"I know the signs," he said. "I know you, and I know what it feels like."

"Sha're," she said, a little hesitantly. She was another thing they never talked about.

"Yes," he said. "She was my wife, and I loved her very much." He looked at her then, very direct. "But she wasn't the only one."

"I know," Sam said. And since Daniel had all but said it, there suddenly didn't seem any reason to pretend after all. "I'm in love with Jack."

"Yes, you are," Daniel said, sounding so calm, and it surprised her how calm he could sound, when she felt like she was in free-fall without a parachute in sight. "And so am I."

That was it, she thought, oddly dizzy. There it was, all out in the open, a secret told, only it had never really been a secret after all.

"This really sucks," she said, startling a laugh out of him. "No, really," she insisted, though she was smiling too. "Here we are, both moping over the same guy. We're really pathetic."

"Yeah, I know," he said, still chuckling, but then he ducked his head to look her in the eye, oddly serious despite the smile that lingered on his face. "It doesn't mean that things just stop, though," he said. "We don't have to put our lives on hold for him. We don't have to be alone just because we can't have what we want."

"No," she said quietly. "We don't." And since she knew that he was about to kiss her, she reached up and pulled his head down, just a little, so that she could kiss him first.

It was probably a bad idea. She'd been over all the reasons why it was a bad idea, actually, and right now, she honestly didn't care. They were both a little drunk, and both a little lonely, and what did it really matter, after all? He was her best friend and she loved him, in a way, and she was certainly attracted to him, and from the way he was kissing her back, so gentle but so _intense,_ she wasn't exactly leaving him cold, either.

Eventually he pulled back, both of them breathing a little hard. "This isn't really… a good idea," he said. The corner of his mouth quirked a little in a smile, and she wanted to kiss that, too. "I should probably go."

"No," she said, sitting up till she was looking at him, eye-to-eye. He titled his head- questioningly, she thought.

"No?"

"No," she said, and let her hand, still cupped loosely around the back up his neck, slide up to his face. The curve of his jaw fit perfectly into her palm. "Stay."

He looked at her for a minute, holding her gaze with his- searching for something. She just sat there and waited, letting him look till he found what he was going to find. She knew what his answer would be.

"Alright," he said finally, and smiled, the smile that broke hearts all over the mountain, all over the galaxy. She wasn't as immune as she'd thought she'd be, not with him sitting close like this, staring at her like she was something he wanted. "I'll stay."

"Good," she said, and kissed him again.

**-----**

The next morning was surprisingly un-awkward. Or maybe not so surprisingly. She knew this man, inside and out, and she wasn't seeing anything she hadn't seen a million times in tents and alien rooms offworld. It was a little different seeing it in her bed, though. She thought that fact alone increased the cuteness factor of the way his hair stuck up in the back by at least ten.

He stumbled blindly off to her shower and came back marginally more awake- plus he'd apparently found his glasses where she'd left them on the dresser after discovering them under the night table, which meant he wasn't squinting at her anymore, which, ask anyone, was a vast improvement. Then she gave him a cup of coffee and a kiss on the cheek and went off to take her shower, and when she got back he was dressed and even mostly conscious.

He drove them back to the mountain, since she'd had one too many beers at her welcome-home party at Jack's place, and he'd driven her home. She'd have to remember to get him to drop her off at Jack's house that night so she could pick up her bike. Otherwise she'd have to get a ride from Jack himself, and that would just be awkward in so many, many ways.

They split up once they got to the mountain and went off to work on their own projects. Around noon Daniel showed up in her doorway, looking for lunch, and they wandered down to the commissary together, engaged in a friendly argument about what that ritual the aliens had tried to get them to do on their last mission was _really_ about.

Daniel took the position that it was probably just a dance for the gods, a thankfully-absent Goa'uld, but Sam stood by her initial guess, which was that the natives were trying to get them all to have sex. With each other or with them, she didn't know, and she didn't care, but it was definitely sex-related. The argument lasted halfway through lunch, which was when Teal'c joined them and explained that it would have been nothing but a feast to welcome the visitors, if only O'Neill hadn't gotten antsy and taken off before Daniel could get the translation nailed down. They all thought wistfully about the kind of things they could have eaten at a welcoming offworld feast, and then looked down with matching expressions of distaste at the unappetizing meals in front of them.

All in all, it was a regular day. Daniel even remembered to grab her on his way out at quittin' time so he could give her a ride to her bike. (Which, incidentally, she shouldn't have been riding yet, and she'd gotten a good earful about it from Janet, too, who'd either spotted her leaving the parking lot, or gotten Jack to spill the beans. Either option was equally likely, with Janet.) They both talked shop the entire way to Jack's house, and when they pulled up, Daniel didn't get out of the car, just sat there with the same mild expression he always had.

"So," she said, and felt awkwardness set in. She wasn't sure what to say to him, exactly. _See you tomorrow?_ she thought, half-hysterically. _Thanks for all the sex?_

"So," he said, and smiled, a real smile, not just his greeting-the-natives smile that was standard Daniel Jackson issue. This was the smile she saw when it was just them. "I've got this movie sitting on my coffee table. Something about snake-head amphibians. Sound any good?"

"Little close to home," she pointed out.

"Yes, well," he said, and shrugged. "I'm pretty sure even the Goa'uld aren't this bad."

"I don't know," she teased. "Some of the dress sense on those guys…"

"Don't remind me," he groaned. "So, you up for it?"

"Always," she said, and pulled on her helmet. "Last one there buys the beer."

She won, of course. He had a head start, but he was driving an _SUV,_ for crying out loud, and didn't have a chance. Luckily for him, his fridge was well-stocked, and he cooked dinner while she watched with her usual blend of fascination and incomprehension, and afterwards he carried the food into the living room while she grabbed the beer.

They were fucking on the couch before the credits were rolling, empty dishes sitting on the coffee table and two different empty beer bottles lying like drunken mismatched shoes on the soft carpet next to it. Afterwards he went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, and she stood behind him waiting her turn and making faces at him in the mirror, making him laugh and almost choke on his toothpaste.

She woke up once in the middle of the night, freezing from her broken air unit, and automatically burrowed closer to the blast furnace that was lying next to her. Daniel mumbled something into the pillow and shifted till he had one arm wrapped around her waist. She fell back asleep instantly.

The sun was up when she woke a second time, and so, Sam realized once she was awake enough to focus, was Daniel. He was lying next to her, half-propped up on one elbow, absently playing with the hair at the nape of her neck.

"So," she said. "What time is it?"

"Late," he said, his hand not pausing. "But it's a Sunday, and we're off. Relax."

Oh, yeah, she'd forgotten about that. She obeyed and relaxed against him, enjoying the sensation of all that warm skin over muscle, pressed naked against her. It had been a while, and it was Daniel. She was allowed to bask a little.

Basking could only last so long, however, before reality inevitably set in. This was… really a bad idea, but they knew that already. More importantly, she loved Daniel, he was her best friend, but she didn't want this to be an affair, or anything. She didn't want to date him; she just wanted what they had right now. And she had no idea how to tell him that.

"Don't worry, we're not having a thing," he said from above her, sounding amused. "Not that kind of thing. It's a friendship thing, and a sex thing if you want."

"How did you-" she started, before looking up and realizing that no, he hadn't read her mind, and yeah, he did know her just that well. "Okay, yeah. That, um, sounds good." Pause. "Not just the friendship thing, I meant, but-"

"Yeah," he said when she couldn't finish the sentence, and leaned down to kiss her. She kissed him back happily, ignoring the morning breath. Yeah. She could get used to this.

"So," he said, when they broke apart for air and she'd settled back down into using him as her pillow again. "It's a weekend, and we have time for a real breakfast. What's your pleasure?"

"Pancakes?" she suggested hopefully.

"Pancakes I can do," he said with a grin and yeah, they could totally do this. It didn't have to be a thing, a relationship thing. They were friends, the best of friends. They had their own kind of love, and it didn't include romance. But apparently, it had room for this.

She didn't mind a bit.

**-----**

"So that was, hard as this might be to believe, actually _worse_ than any lecture I have ever given."

"Even the one right before you entered the project?" Sam asked, morbidly curious. She hadn't been there for the negotiations, thank God. She infinitely preferred near-death experiences to politics.

"Yes," Daniel said. "Then, all I had to lose was my reputation, credibility, income, and respect. This time, I was in danger of losing my sanity."

"I heard it was bad," she said. "I know Jonas wasn't looking forward to dealing with them again."

"Yeah, well, I don't blame him. They didn't seem to care overmuch about actually solving any problems- they just wanted to blame each other for there being problems in the first place."

"So how'd you solve things, then?" she asked around a bite of shrimp.

"I didn't," Daniel said, looking chagrined. "It was all Jack. He did his thing-"

"What thing?"

"You know, the Jack O'Neill thing," Daniel said. "Part charm, part threat, almost never fails? I've been working my ass off and getting _nowhere,_ and he steps in and pretty soon everything's gravy." Daniel scowled and stabbed a bite-sized piece of his tenderloin with his fork. "I hate it when he does that."

"I think he does it on purpose," she agreed. "But everything worked out in the end, mostly, and since that almost never happens, I say we call it a win."

"Okay, point," he conceded. "So what about you? I think I got the bare bones of it from Teal'c, but how was it down there, really?"

"I felt like I was stuck in _A Journey to the Center of the Earth,_" Sam said.

"Seriously."

"I am being serious!" she said. He gave her the Look, and she relented. "It was bad, okay? It was dangerous, and the only reason we survived was because our enemy insisted she go along, and she could take the conditions in a way we couldn't." She sighed and set down her fork. "That's not the worst part, though. The worst part is that Jonas had fallen for her, and the whole time she had a Go-"

She broke off as their waiter came by to fill their drinks, inwardly cursing her carelessness. "Was possessed," she corrected once he was gone again. She sounded like an idiot, but at least she wasn't accidentally leaking classified information. "We got the girl back, but-"

"But she's still not the one he fell in love with," Daniel said, and for a moment he looked so sad, staring blankly down at his plate, that she reached out to touch his arm. He looked back up and smiled at her, silently telling her that he was fine.

"Anyway," she said, after an awkward second, "Even if I knew what was going to happen, I still don't think I would have traded places with you."

"What, you'd prefer almost dying to dealing with bickering bureaucrats?"

"Absolutely," she said.

"Okay, yes, I can see that," Daniel admitted. "You wouldn't _believe_ some of the stuff they put me through-"

The conversation turned to other things, mundane, non-shop-talk things, and by dessert they were bickering over who'd pay the check. It was the best evening out she'd had in ages, Sam realized with surprise, and it put her in a good enough mood that she relinquished the check to Daniel's insistent fingers.

Neither of them mentioned Jack again.

**-----**

"So Colonel Edwards had his check-in today," Sam said.

Daniel looked up from the report he was reading, midway through taking a bit of pancake. "Mmh?"

"Colonel Edwards," Sam said again. "Mining on the Unas planet? You told me to tell you when they had their next check-in. It was this morning."

Daniel swallowed, then said, "It's barely morning now, Sam."

"No, you just like to sleep in," she said. And getting him awake in the morning required two alarms and copious amounts of coffee as a bribe, she'd discovered. "Anyway, I knew you wanted to hear how things were going, so I made sure that I was there for his report."

"And?" Daniel asked around another bite of pancake.

"Everything's great," she said. "We're getting all the naquadah we need, the Unas are getting addicted to chocolate, and Iron Shirt hasn't maimed Colonel Edwards even a little bit."

"Generally a good thing," Daniel agreed. Having cleaned his own plate, he peered inquisitively over at hers and even went so far as to poke at it with his fork. "You gonna eat all of that?"

Since it was actually her second breakfast- she'd had cereal this morning while he was taking his shower- she grabbed one last piece of bacon and pushed her plate towards his side of the table. He rewarded her with a smile and settled in, eating the way he always did when he was planning on working through lunch.

A tray thunked to the table by her elbow as someone settled into the seat next to her. "Hello, kids," Jack said cheerfully, while across the table Teal'c sat next to Daniel. "Doing anything interesting on this fine, sunny day?"

Daniel looked up from the report he'd gone back to. "It's raining outside, Jack."

"Yes, well," Jack said. "We're twenty floors below, anyway."

"So why does it matter what the weather is like outside, O'Neill?" Teal'c asked. Jack cleared his throat.

"Not the point! The point is, what exciting things do the three of you have planned for today?"

"I am leading several classes in basic staff fighting techniques," Teal'c informed them.

"Great, great!" He turned to an oblivious Daniel. "And what about you, Dr. Jackson?"

"Analyzing the footage SG-7 brought back," Daniel said absently. "It's actually quite fascinating, Jack. It seems to be a combination of traditional hieroglyphics and modern-"

"Uh huh, that's… great," Jack said quickly. "Carter?"

"We're completing the last round of tests on the object SG-11 brought back a week ago, sir," she said. "And I think Hammond wanted me to set up a class for all the new recruits- proper transportation protocols for unknown alien technology, manual dialing, that sort of thing."

"So nothing important that will keep anyone here too late," Jack said, and looked positively gleeful. "Well, that's great news! I was planning on taking Teal'c to a karaoke bar, and this way everyone can come along. It'll be a team thing."

Sam exchanged glances across the table with Daniel. They'd been planning on going to see that new action movie, which looked like a complete dick flick but it turned out that, like bad sci-fi, they also shared a love of terrible action movies with no redeeming value other than the number of car chases and explosions. After the movie they'd probably end up at her house, where they'd have fairly spectacular sex.

Or they could take Jack up on his invitation, and go out to a karaoke bar, listen to horrible non-music, get drunk on shitty and too-expensive drinks, and try to explain to Teal'c why people thought this was entertaining.

"Got plans," they said in unison.

Jack looked at both of them suspiciously. "You do, huh? I thought the two of you had no lives."

"I believe that that remark was uncalled-for, O'Neill," Teal'c said reprovingly.

"Well, they complain about it often enough," Jack muttered to himself, but he didn't press the issue. Teal'c twinkled at her from across the table, with that particular Teal'c look that said he knew exactly what was going on. She knew that he knew, because a week ago he'd asked her, out of nowhere in the middle of their training session, if she was involved with DanielJackson. Because he was Teal'c, she'd told him the truth. He'd been pleased, which was why he was apparently helping them out by Jack-wrangling in his own Teal'c-ish way.

"You two sure you don't want to come along?" Jack checked. "I mean, come on. Teal'c, karaoke- what could be better?"

Sam caught Daniel's eye again, and they shared a smile. "We're sure," they said, and they were so busy grinning at each other, they didn't even notice the frown on Jack's face.

**-----**

"You're acting weird."

Sam dragged her gaze up from her plate of spaghetti and forced herself to meet Daniel's patient gaze. "I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do," he said. "You're acting weird, and it's something to do with me, and I'd like- Oh."

Her reluctant look sharpened into a glare when he didn't finish. "'Oh?'" Nothing. "Daniel. 'Oh?'"

"You're seeing someone," he said.

"Damn it," she said, and let her fork drop back onto her plate with a clatter. "I hate it when you do that."

"I'm right, aren't I?"

If he'd looked even the slightest bit smug she would have been tempted to hit him, but he didn't. "Yeah, you're right." She sighed and sat back in her chair. "You're not mad?"

"Of course not," he said. "We're not a thing, remember? You _should_ be out there looking for your happily ever after."

"Well, I don't know if this guy is happily ever after, but…" She shrugged. "He's nice. Charming. Friend of my brother's. A cop but not macho about it."

"Well there's some definite Mr. Right potential there," Daniel said, gently teasing, and somehow, it surprised her, just a little bit, how well he was taking this. She'd thought he might have gotten at least a little pissed, or something, but maybe she just wasn't giving him enough credit. He'd never been one for macho displays, or for pretending ownership over something that wasn't his.

So instead of letting herself get weird about it, she just laughed and flicked a bit of spaghetti in his direction. "Who says I'm not just enjoying Mr. Right Now?"

"No one," he said, and then abruptly his open, laughing expression turned serious. "Just as long as he's not Mr. White Picket Fence."

She frowned at him. "What?"

"I just want to make sure," Daniel said, "that you're not just doing this because you think you should."

Oh, she thought. Now she knew what Daniel meant. He thought she was reacting to the end of her self-denial about Jack and her unorthodox bed-buddy thing with him by latching onto the first guy that seemed likely to give her the stable, _normal_ relationship that her father would want for her.

"No, Daniel," she said, and she didn't let herself sound impatient because this was Daniel, and he was just worried about her, and if anyone had the right to worry, it was him. "It's not about that."

"All right," he said, accepting her at her word, and just like that, he went back to his pasta.

She must have sounded confident, if Daniel believed her that easily, not even an extra look to verify. But inwardly, she wasn't so sure.

**-----**

When they got there, Daniel had his head on the table, buried in his folded arms. His glasses were cast aside in front of him, and for a minute she thought that he was actually taking a nap, but when she sat down next to him and rubbed his back, he moaned "This makes no sense," sounding sleepy and congested and despairing.

"Maybe you should eat something," she suggested, bringing her hand back to herself when she realized that yes, they were sitting in the middle of the commissary, a little discretion might be a good idea, even if they weren't actually sleeping together anymore.

He lifted his head up and gave her an unhappy look, his eyes red and bloodshot, his hair messed up the same way it was when he'd slept on it all night and hadn't bothered to run a comb through it yet. Jack liked to joke that Daniel didn't know what a comb was, but he'd never shared a bed with Daniel. If he had, he'd know the difference between Daniel's daily hairstyle, and bedhead.

"Did I mention that in the dream, the tablet was written in Ancient, and that I could _read_ Ancient?"

He looked so incredibly frustrated and frazzled, and Sam did feel sorry for him, but he also looked kind of adorable, too, so it was hard to work up some really sympathetic sympathy at the moment. "Well that's no so odd, considering you can also do that when you're awake."

He narrowed his eyes to slits in a glare that was probably meant to be threatening, but was actually kind of hilarious. It was also his "I want coffee" look, so it was a little hard to take it all that seriously. Also, he'd buffed up a lot and actually knew how to throw a punch, but she was pretty sure she could break him with her little finger, and she knew all his ticklish spots. Daniel Jackson was pretty much never scary.

"Perhaps," Teal'c suggested diplomatically, "you are attempting to reveal something to yourself."

"Like?" Daniel demanded.

"Like something from when you were Ascended," she put in.

"Like your prior vision of Bra'tac and Ry'ac in danger," Teal'c said. Daniel yawned.

"The tablet sounds a lot like the one you found when you were on Abydos," she said, ignoring Daniel's jaw-twisting yawn.

"That was to lead to the Lost City of the Ancients," Teal'c finished.

"But didn't," Daniel pointed out. "You think that somehow I know the location of the Lost City of the Ancients and just don't remember?"

"If you have the dream again," Teal'c said, "perhaps you should translate the tablet."

Daniel gave Teal'c his skeptical face, and looked over at her. She arched her eyebrow right back at him, and nodded.

He rolled his eyes and buried his head back in his arms with a grunt.

She shared an amused look with Teal'c across the table, and went back to her pancakes in an effort to keep herself from laughing.

**-----**

Daniel caught her in her lab just as she was about to head on up to the waiting surveillance van. "So how are you feeling about the stakeout later?" he asked. She gave him a look.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" she asked. "You're the one who's getting staked out, here." She grinned. "Like a sacrificial goat," she added with relish.

He gave her an irritated sideways look. "You're spending too much time with Jack."

"Uh, yeah." She glanced away.

Daniel, with his usual perceptiveness, said, "And how is Jack, about Officer Pete?"

Try as she might, she hadn't been able to stop him from calling Pete that. After a day or two, she'd given it up as a lost cause. "He's… weird."

"This is Jack we're talking about," Daniel said wryly. "You're going to have to be a little more specific."

"He's just… He's acting like he's fine with it. He's being… _understanding_"

Daniel knew Jack just as well as- well, better than- she did. "Okay, yeah, that's a bad sign. What were the two of you talking about?"

"I was humming, apparently," she said. He gave her a look. "We were stuck in an elevator, okay? It was your fault, you're the one who went off in search of coffee."

"I had a Goa'uld in my dreams, I'm allowed to need caffeine," he replied amiably. "And what else?"

She sighed. "He came in about an hour ago while I was checking over the tranq kit. I was just telling him… well, Pete's a cop, you know? And he's got cop instincts, so he knows I'm not working on Deep Space Telemetry down here." She looked at him miserably. "You can imagine where this is going."

"Yeah, I've had that conversation before," Daniel said. "Of course, I didn't realize till later that I was having it with Osiris, not Sarah, but…" He shrugged. "So what'd Pete do?"

"Grabbed his stuff and left," Sam said. "I haven't been able to get ahold of him all day."

"Ah," Daniel said. "Was last night his first night over?"

If it had been _anyone_ else asking that question (except Janet, or possibly Teal'c) she would have frozen them out completely, but this was Daniel, and the normal rules didn't really apply to him. He was, technically, an ex-lover, but there wasn't that residual awkwardness you always had around an ex, just an occasional shared glance, when both of them seemed to remember at the same time that they used to sleep together. Like this morning, when she'd made a crack about male fantasies and he'd given her a Look and nudged her in the arm. It had been… intimate, yes, but a comfortable sort of intimacy, and that comfort was why she answered his question now.

"Yeah," she admitted.

"Oh, poor Sam," Daniel said, and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close in for a hug. She let herself lean against him, burying her nose in the crook of his neck. He was just the right height for this, just the right person.

"Forget about it for a little while, okay?" he asked. His voice was low and said right into her ear. "Forget about Jack and whatever's brewing in that witch's cauldron he calls a brain, forget about Officer Pete, just let it go." She felt his mouth curve upwards in a smile where his cheek was pressed against the side of her head. "We've about to capture Osiris, get Sarah back, maybe even find the location of the Lost City. What's not to like about that?"

"You're right," she said, laughing into his shoulder. "You're absolutely right," she said, and leaned back till she could give him a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks."

"Anytime," he said back, and then he picked up the tranq kit before she could get to it.

"Give me that," she said, but he just shook his head and grinned.

"No way, Sam." She made a grab for it, but he took a couple dancing steps backwards till he was standing in the doorway. The twinkle in his eyes was the only warning she got before he turned on his heel and _ran._

Swearing to herself, she took off after him.

**-----**

Sam wasn't even a little surprised when her doorbell rang and she opened it to reveal Daniel standing there, movie rental case in one hand and beer in the other. She'd recognized the sound of his car as it pulled up in front of her house, which was odd, since he was hardly the only person she knew who drove an SUV. But Daniel's had that extra little purr that basic shop maintenance couldn't give it, that only came from a little up-close-and-personal TLC.

(She'd changed his oil a month or so ago when she'd found out he was actually going to pay someone to do it for him, and she'd maybe tinkered a little while she was under there. Call it a compulsion.)

It wasn't just the sound of the car, though. On some level, she'd been expecting him. The whole time she'd been dating Pete, it had been Pete that she'd been thinking about, but the moment it was over, she's switched right back over to Daniel. It was like Pete was just a blip on the regular soundtrack of her life, and Daniel was written into every track. They hadn't spent that much less time together than before when she'd been otherwise occupied, and now that she wasn't, well, of course he'd be by. Why wouldn't he?

Sometimes, she thought to herself as she grabbed the beer and headed for the kitchen, she could be really kind of clueless.

"So," Daniel said, as he followed her in. "How'd things turn out with Officer Pete?"

"You do know he's a detective, right?" she asked, trying to delay answering. He gave her patient eyes, and she gave in. "Alright, so maybe they didn't turn out so well."

"I saw him after we got Osiris," Daniel said. "He didn't look so good. Did he just decide that our world was too dangerous for him?"

"Not even close," Sam said. "He didn't get clearance."

Daniel blinked. "You're kidding."

"Nope," she said. "I'd promised him that if he made it through, I'd tell him everything, only he made it through and I still had to recite the party line. I'm pretty sure he's back in Denver already."

"Ouch," he said, and reached out with one long arm, snagging her wrist and hauling her in close for a hug. She surrendered, thinking that he seemed to be making a habit of this kind of thing. Not that she minded, or anything, but even Daniel was enough of a guy to generally avoid spontaneous hugs. She must look as crappy as she felt, she thought distantly. Great.

This close, if she tilted her head back she could still see the faint red mark Osiris has left with his ribbon device. At least this time they caught him, she thought. They caught him, and they took him out of Sarah, and Daniel's friend was safe. A happy ending all around, for a change.

Well, except for the part where her boyfriend broke up with her. And maybe he'd said some stuff that was pretty hurtful, but here, hugging Daniel, being hugged by Daniel, it didn't seem so bad. So what if he thought she was cold and unfeeling and all of those other things? She knew different. And she wasn't as broken up about losing him as she'd thought she'd be, because in the end, Daniel had been right, just like Daniel always was. Pete had been the chance for a white picket fence life, and now that he was gone, she realized that she didn't live a white picket fence, and she was never going to.

And she was okay with that.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Daniel whispered into her ear. "I know you wanted things to work out."

Daniel had known what she was doing with Pete. He'd understood way before she did. But then again, Daniel was usually light-years ahead of everyone else when it came to understanding people. He couldn't balance an equation to save his life, and he couldn't plan an attack or shoot a staff weapon in a straight line, but he could talk to people. He _knew_ people, not just their language but them, and he understood them. He took them as they came and respected them for who they were, not what they could do, or even who they _could_ be. It was a gift that both awed and humbled her. _He_ awed and humbled her, when she stopped to think about it, think about this fucking extraordinary man she'd known for the last seven years.

And he called her "sweetheart." Pete had called her babe, or baby, to be charming, to charm her. And it had worked, but Pete hadn't, and here she was, quite literally back in Daniel's arms, and it occurred to her to wonder why she'd bothered to leave. Because he called her sweetheart, even when she wasn't with him, and it never occurred to him that it was unusual for a man to call a woman that when he wasn't (currently) sleeping with her. But Daniel did. He was a linguist, words were his life, and he always said precisely what he meant to say, and so he called her sweetheart, because that's what he meant. That's what she was to him, whether she was sleeping with him or not.

"Thanks," she said, idly winding her fingers in the tail of his shirt. "I'm okay, though."

He huffed a laugh. "I know you are." Then he pulled back, his expression abruptly serious. "He wasn't good enough," he said. "He couldn't hack it. But I can. I'm still right here, Sam. Whatever you need."

Yes, she thought distantly. He was. "I know you are, Daniel," she said, and reached up to pull away his glasses, wanting to see the intensity of his expression without the shielding filter of his lenses. Yeah, there he was, gorgeous, intense blue, focused all the way on her. "I know."

And then she kissed him.

He kissed her back, and she had just enough presence of mind to toss his glasses gently onto the kitchen table, where they wouldn't get crunched. They stood there for a long time, just kissing, while her hands fisted in the back of his shirt, and one of his hands crept up to wind itself in the ends of her short hair.

And then Daniel stopped, pulling back just enough to look her in the eye. "I have to ask, Sam. What are we doing here? Not that I'm going to object any way, but I kind of need to know where we stand."

The dreaded question, she thought. Only, maybe not so dreaded. She knew exactly how to answer, after all.

"We're in a relationship, Daniel," she told him. "You're my best friend, and I love you."

"I love you too," he said, very seriously. She smiled at him.

"And I'm never going to have the white picket fence. That's what I was looking for with Pete, you were right about that. And it turns out that's not really what I need. I need to be happy, and I'm happy with you. We work, together. Right?"

"Right," he said, and he had that smile he got, when he was trying to explain something, and the person finally understood what he was saying. Sam had a feeling he'd been explaining this one to her for a while now.

"So this is us," Sam said. "I don't need to go looking for anything else. I don't _want_ to go looking for anything else. There's nothing but heartbreak down that road, and I don't want any more heartbreak. I just want to be happy." She kind of felt like she was repeating herself, but she couldn't explain it any better than that.

Daniel got it, though. He knew how to translate Sam-ese better than anyone. "Me, too, Sam," he told her, and his smile was beautiful, just… beautiful. "I don't want to go looking for something that's just going to end up badly, and I don't want to pine after someone I'm never going to have. I want you. And we're happy."

"Exactly," she said, and grinned. "We're happy. And we work."

"Exactly," he agreed.

"But," she said.

He blinked at her. "There's a but?"

"Kind of," she said. "If we're doing this, for real doing this, and I think we are, then I'm putting in a rider."

He cocked his head to the side. It was his "listening" pose. "Go on."

"The colonel," she said. "If either one of us, at any point in the future, gets the chance with Jack, we take it. No hard feelings on either side. That's the rider. Jack."

He thought about it for a moment, considering all the possible angles, then nodded. "That's fair," he said. "So. Deal?"

"Deal," she said, and kissed him again.

**-----**

"Hey you." Sam looked up to see Daniel standing next to her bed, smiling at her. "You gave us all quite a scare."

"Yeah, so I've heard." She started to arch an eyebrow at him, winced when it pulled at the healing cut on her cheekbone, and thought better of it. "I also heard things didn't go so well around here, either."

"Yes, well, the rebel Jaffa are leaving because apparently, they have to 'learn how to be free' on their own, and the Tok'ra are taking off because they're secretive bastards." He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, which was wilder even than usual, sticking out in all directions. She was pretty sure he hadn't had so much as a wink of sleep since she'd gone missing, and the politicking probably hadn't helped. "Nothing I could say could make a difference."

She still wasn't strong enough to, say, sit up by herself, but she could reach out and lay her hand over Daniel's clenched fist. It wasn't much, but judging by Daniel's sudden soft smile, it was enough. "I knew you did your best, Daniel." She knew that was what was bothering him the most, that he had done his best, and it hadn't been good enough. In Sam's experience, it was rare that Daniel's best wasn't more than enough.

"Thanks," he said, and then abruptly and unsubtly changed the subject. "So how are you feeling? You were asleep for a long time; we were getting pretty worried about you."

Daniel's unconscious imitation of her dad caused all of her good feeling to flee. "I'm okay," she said, and even to her own ear she sounded unhappy. "It'll be a couple of days before I can get out of here, but otherwise I'm good."

"Hmm," Daniel said, and he had that inscrutable look, the one that said he could see right through you, but he wasn't sure you wanted to hear what he wanted to say.

She didn't, but… She sighed. "Okay, what?"

"Nothing, it's just… you don't exactly look okay."

She affected a hurt look. "What, you mean running for my life from a Kull warrior wasn't an effective beauty regimen?"

"You're gorgeous, and you know it, and that's not what I was talking about."

Not that she minded hearing Daniel call her gorgeous, but she wished that he wasn't so quick to cut to the core of an issue. "Yeah, I know."

"So what is bothering you?" When she didn't answer, he gave her the look again and said, "I know Jacob came in earlier, to say goodbye before he left. Was it something to do with that?"

Damn it, she hated how well he knew her, sometimes. Most of the time, no, but every once in a while, it'd be nice if he could be a little more clueless. "Yeah," she admitted. "He's… well, thanks to the failing alliance, he's not going to be around for a while." She tried to make it sound matter-of-fact, like it didn't really matter, but from the comforting squeeze Daniel gave her hand, she figured she didn't quite make it.

"Hey," Daniel protested gently. "You didn't see him once they brought you back in. He spent the entire time you were asleep trying to decide if he should go and stay here with you, but in the end he had to try and help save the alliance so we can win the war. You or I would do the same, Sam. It doesn't mean that he doesn't still love you. You know he does."

She'd been telling herself the exact same thing ever since her father had walked out the infirmary door, but it wasn't until Daniel said it, too, that she really believed it. Maybe she just needed outside confirmation, proof that she wasn't just comforting herself, or maybe it was because she knew Daniel, and he always gave it to her straight, the unvarnished truth, whether she wanted to hear it or not.

"Thanks, Daniel," she said, her voice suddenly even more hoarse from her tightened throat. He just smiled again, and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead.

"You're welcome," he whispered against her skin. When he tried to straighten up, she grabbed his wrist and tugged.

"Don't go anywhere," she said. "Bed's big enough for two."

He arched an eyebrow at her, but gently scooted in next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into his warmth, drawing strength from his rock-steady calm. "So how'd your day go?"

He laughed a little, and she smiled at the feel of it rumbling under her ear. "Had a bunch of people talking at me all day," he said. "Got a little irritated, and a whole lot worried. So, just your average workday. What about you?"

"Oh, you know, survived an alien attack, outsmarted an unbeatable warrior, got hugged by Jack," she said airily. "You know. The usual."

She felt the curve of his grin against the top of her head. "Hugged by Jack, huh? Your day couldn't have been too bad, then."

She smiled too, and let herself snuggle in more closely. "Yeah," she said, looking at his large brown hand, wrapped comfortingly around her smaller one. "It had its good points."

They sat there in silence for a few minutes. When Sam felt herself start to fall asleep, she lifted her head, intending to tell Daniel to go translate something and let her nap in peace, but before she could open her mouth, she spotted someone standing in the doorway. Her heart leapt into her throat, panic taking hold as she considered who it could be, what she and Daniel looked like right now, how she could explain it away, Daniel wasn't technically military, but still-

And then she realized it was Janet, who'd encouraged her to just go for it, all those months ago. Janet, who was one of her closet friends, and who was just about the last person to disapprove of this.

Janet was grinning, too, clipboard obviously forgotten where it was tucked under her arm. She waited till Sam was looking at her, then tipped her a huge wink, placed her finger over her lips, and tiptoed off.

Sam smiled to herself. Then her head fell back into its spot on Daniel's chest, and she let herself drift.

**-----**

He was laughing she towed him up the front walk to her house. "Whoa, slow down there, soldier," he said. "I'm going to trip over something and fall down and break my crown, and then where will you be?"

"Very, very bored," she said, and managed to get the front door unlocked and opened without letting go of his wrist. "C'mon, Indiana Jones. Where's your sense of adventure?"

He balked at the doorway, glaring at her even as she tugged, trying to pull him into the house. "Don't call me that," he grumbled. "You know I hate those movies."

"Yes, and someday I will ambush you and force you to watch them," she said. "Until then, come _on._"

One last yank caused him to lose his balance and he stumbled over the doorframe. She waited till he was clear of the door and then shut it behind him, blocking off all hope of escape.

"But they're terrible!" he complained, pushing his slipping glasses back up his nose with his free hand, since she kept her grip on his other wrist in case he tried to make a break for it. "A real archaeologist would never-"

"Run around getting into trouble?" she finished for him. "Gee, Daniel. Maybe you should take a better look at what you do for a living."

He stuck out his tongue at her, resorting to his inner five-year-old. She was hard-pressed not to giggle. "Very mature, Daniel."

"Yes, well," he said. She rolled her eyes and pushed him back through the hallways until they got to the living room, where she maneuvered him back up against the couch and, with one last push, toppled him over the arm and onto his back on the cushions.

He, of course, pulled her down right with him. "Huh," he said, as she sprawled ungracefully on top of him. "If I'd known letting you kick me around in the gym once a week would get you like this, I would have taken you up on your offer a long time ago."

She shrugged and settled herself more comfortably on top of him, pulling his glasses off with one hand. "I don't know, it seemed like a fun idea to me. Especially the grappling parts." She set the glasses down on the far side of the coffee table, out of harm's way, and let her hand come right back to his face, her fingertips glancing over the angles of his cheekbones, smoothing over his forehead, running her fingertips through the spiky ruff of his bangs. "Getting sweaty and all pressed together? Yeah."

"You've got a point," he said, grinning, and she kissed him, just like that, tucked her hand around the back of his neck and kissed that irresistible smile. He started chuckling, and it was so infectious that she started giggling too, still kissing, till they were laughing into each other's mouths, kissing as they rocked together, laughing and kissing, kissing and laughing.

**-----**

"I really need a drink."

Daniel grimaced. "I know."

"No, I mean I _really_ need a drink."

"Yes, Sam, I know."

She grabbed his shoulders and shook him as hard as she could, not that he moved much. Man spent too much time in the gym with Teal'c. "Daniel, I really, really need to get drunk _right now._"

Daniel sighed and snagged one of her hands in his. "I _know,_ Sam. Me too. But we can't. Cassie's sitting on your couch _right now,_ in case you forgot, and she needs us. We lost our friend, but she lost her mother."

Sam sighed and slumped. "Yeah, I know. But it's just so _hard…_"

Daniel nodded, and he had that distant look that said he was replaying a memory across the backs of his eyes, over and over again. She'd been seeing that look a lot, over the past couple of days.

"The memorial service is tomorrow," he said after a while. He'd come back, a little, from wherever it was when he went off like that. To a patch of trees on an alien world, Sam knew, where he'd seen his friend die. She wished that she could give him something, some comfort, some measure of peace, but she'd cried herself out this morning in her lab, and she felt dry, and hollow, and empty. She didn't have anything left to give.

"I know," she said. "General Hammond asked me to speak."

"What are you going to say?" he asked.

"I couldn't think of a single thing," she admitted. "Teal'c wrote it for me."

Daniel smiled, then, faint but visible. "Then it'll be perfect."

"Yeah," she said. "It will."

Out in the living room, she heard Cassie get off the couch, and let go of Daniel's hand. They were standing a respectable distance apart when she came into the kitchen. "Sam? I think I'm ready to go to bed now."

Cassie's eyes were red from all the tears, her face pale and expressionless. Sam went over to her immediately, her own grief forgotten in the face of what Cassie had to bear. "Okay, sweetie. I've already made the guest bedroom up for you, just like when you used to sleep over sometimes."

"Thanks, Sam," Cassie said, and hugged her, suddenly and without warning. Sam let her, clinging back as tightly as she could, feeling dwarfed by Cassie's tall dancer's body. The scared little girl she'd saved all those years ago was all grown up now, but she still needed Sam, and Sam would do anything to help her, any way she could.

Daniel was there, too, wrapping one arm around Cassie's shaking shoulders, and laying another on the back of Sam's neck, squeezing gently in a hidden comfort. "C'mon, Cass," he said gently. "Let's get you to bed. I'll make waffles in the morning for you, okay?"

Cassie looked up at that, and if her eyes were as desolate as they'd been ever since Sam had picked her up at the airport a few hours ago, there was also a spark there, a hint of self. "With strawberries?"

"And real maple syrup," Daniel agreed. "I know how you like 'em."

"Alright," she acquiesced, and let Sam lead her down the hallway, and tuck her into bed like she was twelve again, pliant and trusting under Sam's familiar hands. Sam paused in the doorway after she turned out the light, looking at the shock of rainbow hair on the pillow, looking at this beloved girl, irreplaceable in every way, and just as fragile as any other life. Her precious spark could be blown out in an instant, and Sam wouldn't be able to do anything to stop it.

She closed the door, and went back down the hall to Daniel.

He was making a bed for himself on the couch, pillows and spare blankets taken from a hall closet he'd helped her organize, months ago. He looked so familiar there, in her living room, where they'd spent countless nights drinking and gossiping and watching movies and having sex and laughing together. He was just… Daniel, one of the most constant constants in her life, and she couldn't bear it if she lost him too, after everything.

"I'm glad you're here," she told him. He looked up at her voice, and smiled faintly.

"I'm glad I can help," he said. "Admittedly, the couch isn't the most comfortable, but…" He shrugged, rueful. With Cassie here, it was the only place he could sleep. They both knew it, but they both wished it was different, and Sam showed her apology with her eyes, with her expression, with every yearning line of her body, because she couldn't bring it to voice.

"Cassie's glad, too," she said instead. "You know she worships the ground you walk on, you and Jack."

"Jack's a little too injured to be sleeping on any couches tonight," Daniel said.

Truth, and a truth she would rather not be reminded of. She could have lost someone else important to her today. She'd been tamping it down in her head, locking it away so that she could function. She was pretty sure that if she let herself remember the moment Jack had gone down, replay it the way Daniel was replaying Janet's death, she'd break down right where she was standing.

"Yeah, and he's great with heroics, but not so good with the emotional support." She tried to make it light, teasing, like a joke. It fell flat.

Daniel looked down the darkened hall. "I think he'd managed, for this," he said, and the distant look was back in his eyes. She wanted to reach out, to soothe it away. She wanted him to hold her, and hold her down, open her up till she could empty out the grief that was eating at her insides like cancer.

"Goodnight," she said, and fled to her room.

She lay awake all night, eyes aching and dry, letting the empty shadows on the ceiling wipe her clean till she thought nothing, felt nothing, was nothing.

**-----**

They got home late the next night. After the memorial service, Jack had invited everyone back to his house for a wake. Sam had wanted to say something about his ribs, he was still injured, he wasn't up to drinking much less hosting- but Daniel said it for her, not that Jack listened. He didn't drink anything, but then neither did Daniel or Sam. Daniel because he was driving home, and Sam because as much as she craved the oblivion of drunkenness, she had to look after Cassie. More than that, she had to look after herself, and she knew that if she let herself be impaired to that degree, she'd have that breakdown that was hovering just around the corner.

Cassie went straight to bed when they got back to Sam's house. They stood in the kitchen, sipping twin cups of coffee, and listened to the sounds of her brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed. Eventually the door closed and the light clicked off, and Sam listened to the sounds of her crying, and just hoped that she'd soon cry herself to sleep.

"I probably shouldn't be drinking this," Sam said eventually, gesturing carefully with her coffee cup. Daniel nodded and made a face at his own mug.

"I know. But it's not like we're going to be going to sleep tonight, anyway. What's a little caffeine?"

"Point," she granted, and took another sip. "Daniel, what are we going to do?"

She could have been asking about almost anything, but he knew what she meant. "What we always do, I suppose," he said. "We keep going. Jack's on medical leave, and General Hammond gave us a week to look after Cassie, so we've got a week. After that, I guess it's back to business as usual."

"A week, huh," she said after a minute.

"A week," he said.

"I don't think I'm going to be okay after a week," she said calmly.

"I don't think anyone is," he said. "But I don't think Anubis cares."

"Business as usual."

"Business as usual."

She finished her mug of coffee and then just looked at him for a moment, standing there so perfectly at home in her kitchen, drinking out of her "Scientists do it on the periodic table!" mug, still wearing the wrecked remains of his black funeral suit. He even had his tie on, though the knot was pulled down almost to his collarbone, and his jacket was hanging open, the first few buttons of his shirt undone. He had that same stupid haircut, his too-long bangs sacrificed in favor of too-short, making him look dopey and absent-minded. She thought of some of the footage she'd seen, Daniel's abstract, one-word answers in his interview, "I wanted to see if you'd chase me," to poor Emmett. She thought of his face during the memorial this morning, the way he'd almost flinched at the sound of his name read in that list, his dead eyes and false smile over waffles, the fierceness when taps was played, making some kind of promise to himself that she'd never know, and never ask.

He looked like Daniel. He looked like Daniel in mourning.

"I think I'm going to go to bed," she said, still with the same unnatural calm.

"Good night," he said, absently. All of his attention was focused on whatever he saw in the depths of his coffee cup.

She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth to get rid of the lingering taste of stale coffee and tears. Padded barefoot back to her bedroom, holding her shoes in one hand, and stripped methodically, laying her uniform out on top of the dresser. Dressed only in an oversized white dress shirt Daniel had left here weeks ago, she crawled into bed, and grimly commenced staring at the ceiling.

Five minutes or three hundred and fifty sheep later, she heard the click of her door opening again, and looked up to see Daniel's familiar dark shape standing in her doorway, only barely visible from the ambient light coming in through the window. She must have made some movement, or sound, to acknowledge his presence, because he stepped away from the door and closed it behind him, padding quietly over to her bed. Closer up, she could see that he was still dressed, though he'd shed the jacket and tie, and his shoes, too, from the soft shush of his footsteps on the carpet. He didn't move to join her in bed, and she had the odd thought that if she said nothing, did nothing, he would stand there till the end of the world, waiting for her permission.

She gave it with an outstretched hand, fisting it in the front of his absurdly expensive shirt and pulling him down on top of her with one good yank.

It happened fast. Daniel braced himself above her on one hand and pushed up the shirt with the other, while she undid his pants and shoved them down to his thighs. Daniel was biting his lip as he moved, almost hard enough to draw blood, and had his hand pressed over her mouth, conscious enough of the need for silence, with Cassie only one thin wall away. She ran her hands over his shoulders, and her short, unpainted nails raked furrows in his back that he didn't even seem to notice. The desperation, the need for silence, focused everything inward and made orgasm an implosion. Afterward, she lay there like a human wreck in the wake of the storm, while Daniel groaned quietly and went off to the bathroom to get a washcloth to clean up.

They fell asleep there, Daniel holding her. He was still dressed, and the feel of his arms around her was starkly comforting. Cradled by his heat and strength and love, she was finally able to cry again, clean, silent tears trickling down her face and soaking the fabric of his shirt under her cheek. She thought of her last clear memory of Janet, standing in the doorway of the infirmary, grinning like she'd won the lottery, and happy, so damn happy because Sam had found someone.

You've gotta take your happiness where you can find it, Sam thought. And here, with Daniel's quiet breaths stirring her hair, she knew that she'd found it.

Janet would have approved.

**-----**

The next morning came with a grief hangover and the terrifying realization that someone was awake in their kitchen.

It was unlikely that it was any new visitors, which narrowed the possibilities down to one, since Daniel was still asleep next to her, snoring quietly. Cassie was awake and moving around out there, and Daniel was very obviously not sleeping on the couch, and that was… oh, very not good. Very, very not good.

She got Daniel awake with much abuse of her elbow, and prevented him from stumbling out to the shower like he usually did by the expedient method of just holding the door shut. He tugged on the doorknob a couple times before looking blearily up to see her hand pressed flat against the wood. There was another couple seconds of delay while he processed, and then he looked at her with confusion in his eyes.

"Cassie's awake," was all she had to say. Pre-coffee confusion disappeared from his eyes, and in an instant he was as alert as if she'd given him a shot of pure caffeine.

"Oh," he said. "What are we…"

"Going to do?" she asked. "I'm pretty sure I asked that last night, and a wise friend told me to do what we always do. Different situation, maybe, but I think it still applies. Keep going."

Daniel nodded. "Alright," he said, and smiled the way he did, sometimes, right before they stepped through the Stargate. "Ready?"

"Almost," she said. She hunted around till she found a pair of jeans and pulled them on, then slid her feet into a pair of raggedy bunny slippers. "Okay. Now I'm ready."

Cassie was slouched against the kitchen counter, hunched into Sam's spare robe and holding a mug of coffee with both hands. She looked up when they came in, wearing what Sam was sure were identical blushes, and gave them a sly look out of bloodshot eyes over the rim of her mug. Then she set it aside and they could both see her smiling, and maybe it was a little weak, but it still a smile, and the first one Sam had seen since she'd gotten off that plane.

"So," she said. "I take it you two are together now?"

Sam opened her mouth to explain the "Yes, but-" then thought better of it, and shut it again. Daniel came to the rescue. "Yes. We're together."

"Huh," Cassie said, and then grinned again, still weak but growing stronger all the time. "Cool." Then she turned to arch an eyebrow at Daniel. "So. Waffles?"

"What, again?" Daniel griped, and nothing in this world or any other could have stopped Sam from grabbing his hand and holding on tight, because yeah, they were going to be okay. They were all going to be okay.

**-----**

A couple weeks later, things had calmed down, as much as they ever did. General Hammond had finally gotten fed up with Jack and sent him home to complete his recovery, because a healing Colonel O'Neill stuck riding a desk was a misery for every single person who came in contact with him. Cassie had taken a flight back to school a few days ago, hugging them both in the airport so tightly Sam thought he ribs might crack. The pall of grief that had hazed the mountain was slowly fading, though people avoided the infirmary level whenever possible, and the returning Doctor Warner wasn't exactly receiving a warm welcome. But that was expected, and honestly? Nobody really liked Warner all that much the first time around.

They were in Daniel's kitchen. He'd cooked dinner, of course, just like he always did because yeah, she was hopeless, but she could wash dishes and she usually did. She was drying them now, and listening to the sound of Daniel muttering to himself as he worked on something or other.

She finished drying the dishes and put them all away in their proper places, and then turned around and leaned hipshot against the kitchen sink, taking a moment to just stand still and watch him. He'd let his bangs grow back out a little after that time she'd told him he looked like a dork, and they were currently sticking out every which way the same way they always did when he was working on something difficult, because he always ran his fingers through his hair when he got frustrated. He'd shed the nice shirts and slacks he usually wore these days in favor of threadbare sweats and a t-shirt with a hole in the collar, and he was hunched over the table, almost glaring at the photos that were spread out across the table, some sort of obelisk, she thought he'd said. His shoulder blades stuck out against the fabric of his t-shirt, and even from here she could see the muscles knotted in his shoulders and the back of his neck. His glasses were sitting in the crease of one of his textbooks, halfway across the table.

She thought about how comfortable it felt, standing in his kitchen and seeing him there, alive and well and so very, very Daniel. They were both so damn lucky to have someone, to have each other, and she didn't want to waste another minute, because it might be the only one they had. If she'd learned nothing else from Janet, it was that.

She gave up her watching spot and went over to Daniel, leaning over the back of his chair and hooking her chin over his shoulder as she wrapped her arms around his chest from behind. His free hand, the one not holding his pen, came up automatically to rest over her crossed wrists, and she could see the corners of his mouth curl up in a smile.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," she said back. "Whatcha workin' on?"

"Finishing up the last of the backlog," he said. "At least the downtime was good for something. You caught up on all your paperwork, right?"

"Nope," she said. "Logged lab time. Jack's the one who was doing paperwork all week."

"Oh God, I know," he moaned. "Did I tell you what he said to me the other day? Just because he's stuck behind a desk doesn't mean he has to-"

She listened, content when Daniel's grumbles about Jack inevitably turned to a rambling semi-lecture on the thing from P3-whatever. This was familiar, and comforting. The two of them in his kitchen like this, though she felt this sense of home in his office, in the briefing room, in prison cells and Goa'uld ships and lying side-by-side in an open-air camp, looking up at the stars, trading stories about the constellations, her science matched by his mythology. Daniel was always just so very Daniel, and whatever they went through and whoever they loved and lost or never had at all, ever since her very first gate trip it had been the two of them, back-to-back and head-to-head, confronting each other and inspiring each other and holding each other up. He was her very best friend, in this world, or any other she'd ever landed on. They were, as the Colonel liked to say, the Wonder Twins.

Yeah, she thought. This was real.

**-----**

"Okay, so let's not do that again," Daniel said as they came through the front door. "Next time we go on a field trip, I pick the destination."

"Okay, yes, today could have been better," Sam admitted. She hung up her coat, held her hand out for Daniel's, and did the same with his. "But at least there was some good."

He gave her a disbelieving look as he toed off his shoes. She winced. "Alright, maybe not so much." Pause. "We did get to see another on of Teal'c's hats, though."

That got a smile out of him, but not as much of one as she could have hoped. "Okay, spill."

He blinked at her like the absent professor he hadn't been for years. "Spill what?"

"Yeah, like that's going to work on me. What's bothering you?" She stopped to think about that for a moment. "Besides the obvious."

Daniel turned and paced out of the hallway. She followed him into the living room and found him standing there in the middle of the room, the same helpless look on his face that he'd had when she'd found him in the tunnel. "Daniel," she said. "Come on. It's me."

"All I wanted to do was help her," Daniel said without looking at her. "She was only a year old, and they took that blank slate and created something horrifying. They twisted her, made her something she never should have been. Made her wrong." He closed his eyes. "The only way to win is to deny the battle. She fought herself to death."

She'd heard him say that before, the bit about denying the battle. "Daniel, Anna wasn't Shifu."

"No, she wasn't. Shifu had someone to look out for him. Shifu was able to escape the evil in him."

"And he put some pretty big scars on you to teach you about it, too," Sam said. At his sharp, betrayed look, she added, "I'm not trying to get you to tell me what happened, because I accept that you don't want and have never wanted to talk about it, but Daniel, you walked around for a week looking like your dog had died. You can't think we didn't notice."

He sighed and flopped back onto the couch. "No, I suppose not."

She went over and sat next to him, sliding one arm around his waist. "Hey. Next time, you can definitely pick the field trip."

"As long as Agent Barrett doesn't put in another call," Daniel said. And was that bitterness in his voice?

"You think he should have called in someone else?" she asked carefully.

"Logically? No," Daniel said. "But I didn't want to be responsible for that girl's fate, Sam. I didn't want that on my shoulders. And I sure as hell didn't need another death on my hands, not so soon after- Well." He looked away, then back. "So no, I think he made the right call. I just think that it sucks, is all."

Privately, Sam thought that Daniel had been spending too much time listening to Jack complain. He was starting to sound like him. "You will get no arguments from me there," she said. "In my opinion, today should be wiped right off the record books." There was silence for a moment, and then- "We didn't blow up Orange County."

"That's right," Daniel said. "We didn't."

"That's got to count for something, right?"

Daniel sighed and relaxed against her, probably for the first time all night. "Yes, I think it does."

Silence again, but this time it was comfortable. Then she remembered something. "Hey, did I tell you that Barrett asked me out?"

Daniel's body shook with silent laughter. "What? No, you didn't mention that part."

She was grinning now, enjoying this. "Yeah, I told him thanks for helping us with the Woolsey thing, and he asked me out to dinner."

"Smooth," Daniel said. "What'd you say?"

Sam turned her smile against his shoulder. "I told him I was with somebody."

She felt him go still, and peeked up in time to see his face soften. "Really?"

"Yep," she said.

"Good," he said, and kissed her.

**-----**

It had been a long summer, for all of them. Everyone was worried about Jack, and the sudden switch to civilian command was rocky, at best.

Daniel had it the worst, though. Teal'c trained or read almost constantly, devouring encyclopedias and pulp fiction with equal voracity for knowledge. Sam, as always, threw herself into work, wracking up more lab hours than she'd ever managed, since joining the SGC. But even as Daniel buried himself in his own work, he wasn't left alone to play by himself, but was constantly dragged out to help Dr. Weir adjust to command. Sam felt sorry for him, because she knew how much Daniel hated that kind of thing, even if he seemed to like Dr. Weir. Just because politics was yet another language he spoke fluently, didn't mean he liked dancing the dance.

There came the inevitable day when he just couldn't keep going anymore, manifesting as his inability to hold a half-full coffee mug upright, even with both hands. Sam took this as a sign that he desperately needed a day off, and made him call in.

"You're going to make yourself sick if you kept his up," she told him. "Then where will you be?"

"Congested?" he tossed back, trying to be cute, but she kept her threatening face on, phone in her outstretched hand. After a few moments, he sighed and took it from her, dialing a familiar number.

The gate had been shut down for weeks now, and any crises that Dr. Weir had could wait. As far as she was concerned, they could live without him for a day.

She couldn't call in like he was, and trooped off to work like any other day. She made sure to leave early that afternoon, though, and headed over to his place and check up on him. God only knew what kind of trouble he could be getting into when he was supposed to be resting.

He wasn't getting into any trouble, she found when she let herself in, or even working, which was good since she'd expressly forbidden it. For a moment she hoped that he'd had the good sense to take a nap- but no, he was curled up under an afghan on the couch, staring off into space. His very lack of expression was what worried her the most, because Daniel had the most expressive face she knew, and she could usually follow his thoughts just be watching him, till he didn't even need to say anything sometimes for her to know what she meant. It her own kind of mind-reading, and right now, she knew that he was deliberately keeping his mind as blank as possible.

She quietly went into the kitchen and made another pot of coffee, coming back out with two steaming mugs in her hands. He noticed her only when she walked into his field of vision, but his smile of greeting was normal enough, if a little strained around the edges.

"Thanks," he said, when she handed him the coffee, and he lifted up the edge of the blanket till she could scoot underneath, but after she'd curled up next to him, he went still again and said nothing more. She just leaned her head on his shoulder and wrapped her hands around her mug, ignoring the heat of the summer afternoon that pressed in through the windows, making her sweat from the blanket and Daniel's body heat. Yes, it wasn't pleasant, but some things were more important, and she was prepared to wait with her coffee for as long as she had to, for Daniel to be ready to say what he needed to say.

When he did say it, though, it wasn't anything like what she'd expected.

"I love you," he said.

As soon as he said it, she knew that he didn't mean as just a friend. Probably he hadn't meant it that way for a long time now, maybe all along, and she felt so foolish not to have seen it sooner. Daniel had a heart big enough to love the whole world, sometimes, and there was certainly room enough for his late wife, one cranky colonel, and her. The only real surprise wasn't that he loved her, or even that she loved him back, (because she did, even if she hadn't known it before this instant) but that she hadn't realized it until now.

"I know," she said. A pause. "Me, too."

"I know," he whispered back, and then they sat in silence together, sipping their unneeded coffee and lost in thought.

They were going to get Jack back, Sam thought, suddenly, fiercely. They needed him. But they weren't in love with him, not quite the way they were before.

They had each other, and that was more than enough.

**-----**

Jack shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot as he knocked on the door. He was here to talk to Daniel, to try and sort through some of the stuff that the little team talk a couple days back hadn't really helped with. Yeah, the decision was already made and he couldn't really go back on it after the whole ceremony thing, but talking to Daniel usually helped with most weird things, so here he was.

Daniel answered after a minute, sleeves rolled up, looking slightly flushed. There was a bite mark on his collarbone, just barely visible around the open collar of his shirt. Jack raised an eyebrow.

"Have an encounter with some cannibals, Daniel?"

Daniel looked shifty. "Um, hey, Jack. This is a surprise."

Jack still wanted to know about the bite mark, but he knew that Daniel would just duck the question again. "Yeah, I know. I just wanted to talk to you. Mind if I come in?"

Daniel got the shifty look again. "Um-"

_Oh._ Whoever left the bite mark was probably still here. "Sorry, didn't realize you had company. I can come back later."

Now Daniel looked resigned. "No, it's okay. You had to know sooner or later."

This didn't sound good, but Jack let himself in and followed Daniel back to the kitchen. There was someone stretched out on the floor, a female someone. She was on her back with her head under the sink, fiddling with the pipes, and her face was obscured by the shadows of the cabinet, but Jack had a sinking feeling that he knew who she was.

And then, from the depths of the sink, came a very familiar voice. "Hey, Daniel, can you hand me that wrench?"

Daniel winced. "Uh, Sam? We kind of have company."

Carter extracted herself from the cabinet, and then blinked up at Jack. "Um. Hello, sir."

"Hello, Carter," Jack said, his dry tone masking the shock. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Daniel's sink clogged while he was fixing dinner," she said, determinedly casual. She looked up at Daniel. "Speaking of which, the wrench?"

"It's right next to you," Daniel said, fondly exasperated.

"Oh, right," she said, and vanished under the sink again.

Jack had control of himself now, and turned back to Daniel, eyebrow ready. "Not cannibals."

"No, not cannibals," Daniel said.

"So how long has this…"

"Been going on?" Daniel finished for him. "A while. Since she got trapped on the Prometheus that time."

_Quite a while, then._ "And Pete?"

"Temporary setback," Daniel said serenely. He had his balance back now, enough to find some humor in the situation, if the tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth was anything to go by. Jack didn't blame him. If the situations were reversed, he'd probably be enjoying the hell out of Daniel's confusion.

But the situations weren't reversed, were they? And that was kind of the point.

"Okay, done," Carter said, sliding out from under the sink and getting to her feet. "You're going to need to get a real plumber to look at it soon, though, or it's going to just keep clogging up like that. I'll call mine for you."

"I have a plumber, Sam," Daniel said.

"But you won't remember to call him," Carter retorted. Then she seemed to remember that Jack was in the room, and gave him an apologetic glance. "Sorry, sir. Was there something you needed?"

"Just to talk to Daniel, here," Jack said. Somewhere in the back of his head, a little ember of hope slowly burned to ash. If he'd just held out long enough, till this was over, till he could retire… But no. Useless thoughts, now. "But it's not that important. I'll get out of your hair."

"No, Jack," Daniel protested just as Carter said, "Don't go, sir." They both smiled at him, cheerful and maybe a little too determinedly at ease. "Dinner's almost done, anyway," Daniel continued. "Stay until it's over, at least. We'll call it a celebration for your promotion." He grinned. "Brigadier General Jack O'Neill."

"Hey, I'm not the only one," Jack said, grinning back. He doubted even Daniel would be able to tell just how false his smile was, or, if he could, he'd probably misinterpret the cause. Daniel was a master translator, but even he had never quite been fluent in Jack. "Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter."

Carter blushed. "Thanks to you, sir."

"Oh no, Carter, you did it all on your own," Jack said. "I just put a word or two in the right ear, is all."

"Well, it was more than enough," Daniel said. "And you both deserved it." And then he went right back to persuasion. "Come on, Jack, don't take off. I even have pie for dessert."

Jack wavered. He'd had Daniel's pie before. "What kind of pie?"

"Apple," Daniel said. "You sure you don't want to stay?"

Jack thought about it. It would be nice to stay for Daniel's always-delicious dinner, followed by _incredible_ pie, to spend time with friends and talk about what was going through his head. He knew Daniel would help, and Carter sometimes had oddly perceptive insights to the heart of the problem, despite the fact that she was often out of touch with her own emotions.

But she wasn't anymore, and the evidence was right in front of him. Carter was standing next to Daniel, their shoulders brushing, and both of them were dressed in civvies, and it was all so very different from the way they were on base, when people were watching. This is what they looked like when they were alone together, loose and relaxed and smiling, just an ordinary couple on an ordinary day, no aliens in sight and nothing to worry about but who was getting the groceries. Just two people in love, was all, and Jack didn't really have a place here, with them.

And that's why he ultimately shook his head regretfully and said, "Nah, I gotta take off anyway." Because it wouldn't just be dinner and pie with two old friends. It'd be dinner and pie with a _couple,_ and that was something entirely different, and the idea of them was too new, too raw, for him to willingly put himself in a situation where he had to sit across from them and watch them together, being couple-y. Maybe tomorrow he'd be ready for that, or next week or never, but definitely not today.

"If you're sure," Daniel said, and somewhere in his eyes was the knowledge of why Jack was leaving. Carter probably wouldn't get it, or at least not all of it, but Daniel always did know him too well for his own good. Jack forgot that, most of the time, but every now and then, like now, something would remind him. Yeah, Daniel knew what was going on. And he'd give him the out if he needed it.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Jack said. "Got General-type things to do." He tried on a cocky smile. It fit surprisingly well. "See you tomorrow?"

"Bright and early," Daniel said, somehow making the words sound like a threat. They probably were. Daniel didn't get up early without good reason.

"Sounds good," he said, and tossed the smile at Carter. "Try not to build anything nuclear, Carter. The paperwork's a bitch."

"You're just going to get Walter to do it," Carter said with a head-shake, but she was smiling, too. "I'll do my best, sir."

"All I can ask," Jack said, and took his leave before things could get more awkward.

Once the door was safely shut behind him, he stopped and took a deep breath. It was still hot outside, muggy even, August still holding on with jealous claws. But September was on its way, and with it came cooler weather. Out with the old, in with the new.

_I lost my chance,_ Jack thought. And the worst part was, he didn't even know which of them he was talking about.

He took another deep breath, savoring the heat of sunshine on his face, and then he got in his car, and he drove away.


End file.
